Declarative and procedural knowledge in early moral conscience: data and implication for development

Introduction: People consider their moral self as more vital for them than any other psychological process (Strohminger, Nichols, 2014). Having a moral conscience, an integrated system of self-regulation that consists of moral emotions, conduct and cognition (Kochanska, Aksan, 2006), is crucial from early development and is expressed both procedurally and declaratively. Aim of the study: To investigate the relation between declarative and procedural moral development trajectories in preschoolers. Material and Methods: An ad hoc instrument (MSPSP) was developed and applied in order to measure moraldevelopment. Three puppet stories, were created, in order to tap into the three moral main categories (emotions, conduct and cognition) children recognized within the stories. Data were also collected on the procedural side through 2 moral dilemmas situations measuring children’s “Internalized Conduct” and “Concern for Others”. N=143 preschoolers (N=76 girls; N = 67 boys; Mean Age=4.2) were enrolled in the study. Results: A simple slope analysis shows that the effect of “Concern for Other” on the declarative moral conscience indexes increases for high - i.e. children aged 4 or older (b=0.29, p=0.047) - and decreases for low values of Age - i.e. children aged less than 4 y.o. (b =-0.37, p =0.04). The effect of “Internalized Conduct” on the declarative moral conscience indexes is significantly moderated (and increasing) only by High values of Age (b=1.64, p=0.03) but not for Low levels of Age (b =-1.01, p=0.25). 419 Conclusions: Only in children older than 4 moral dilemmas’ indexes predict a high score on declarative moral development indexes. Though this procedural-declarative correspondence is quite a long-stated in literature on moral development, our data indicate that this link between the behavioral and the representational levels of moral development. is established and increasing by age 4. Implications of this process for the development of self coherence in infancy are discussed