老师阅读训练第一次作业.pdfVIP

Passage 1 at which young children begin to make moral discriminations about harmful actions committed themselves or others has been the focus of recent research into the moral development of children. Until recently, child psychologists supported pioneer developmentalist n. Piaget in his hypothesis that because of their immaturity, children under age seven do not take into account the intentions of a committing accidental or deliberate harm, but rather simply assign punishment for transgressions on the basis of the magnitude of the negative consequences caused. According to Piaget, children under age seven occupy the first stage of moral development, which is characterized by moral absolutism (rules made by must be obeyed) and imminent justice (if rules are broken, punishment will be meted out). Until young children mature, their moral judgments are based entirely on the effect rather than the cause of a transgression. However, in recent research, Keasey found that six-year-old children not only distinguish between accidental and intentional harm, but also judge intentional harm as naughtier, regardless of the amount of damage produced. Both of these findings seem to indicate that children, at an earlier age than Piaget claimed, advance into the second stage of moral development, moral autonomy, in which they accept social rules but view them as more arbitrary than do children in the first stage. Keasey’s research raises two key questions for developmental psychologists about children under age seven: do they recognize justifications for harmful actions, and do they make dist tions between harmful acts that are preventable and those acts that have unforeseen harmful consequences? Studies indicate that justification cusing harmful actions might lude public duty, self-defense, and provocation. For example, Nesdale and Rule concluded that children were capable of consideri