First Moral Sense: An examination of the appearance of morally related behaviours in the second year of life

While there has been considerable observational work demonstrating that children in the second year of life show signs of moral development, few studies have commented on the nature of the emergence of these signs. This paper, through a longitudinal study of four toddlers, examines the emergence of several signs of moral awareness and their relation to maternal communications that promote moral awareness. The four toddlers showed peaks in behaviours relating to moral awareness around 17-18 months. These peaks appeared to emerge independent of language acquisition. Maternal communications about moral events increased after or at the same time as the toddlers’ peaks. These findings are discussed in terms of a maturational argument for the emergence of moral awareness.