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Children and Adolescents' Internal Models of Food‐Sharing Behavior Include Complex Evaluations of Contextual Factors
Author(s) -
Markovits Henry,
Benenson Joyce F.,
Kramer Donald L.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1046/j.1467-8624.2003.00632.x
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , variety (cybernetics) , consolidation (business) , social psychology , resource (disambiguation) , statistics , computer network , mathematics , accounting , computer science , business
This study examined internal representations of food sharing in 589 children and adolescents (8–19 years of age). Questionnaires, depicting a variety of contexts in which one person was asked to share a resource with another, were used to examine participants' expectations of food‐sharing behavior. Factors that were varied included the value of the resource, the relation between the two depicted actors, the quality of this relation, and gender. Results indicate that internal models of food‐sharing behavior showed systematic patterns of variation, demonstrating that individuals have complex contextually based internal models at all ages, including the youngest. Examination of developmental changes in use of individual patterns is consistent with the idea that internal models reflect age‐specific patterns of interactions while undergoing a process of progressive consolidation.