Coparentalidade e o desenvolvimento da cognição social em crianças pré-escolares

Abstract

Several studies have investigated the ability of young children to discriminate between good and bad information in new learning situations in a phenomenon known as Selective Trust or Selective Learning. Some studies have been particularly interested in the factors that control selective learning such as the informant's gender, the informat's familiarity, the reliability history, among others. In Brazil, however, the number of surveys on selective trust is still limited. The present study aims to contribute to this line of investigation in the country by investigating the role of parents' coparental relationship in the selective trust of Brazilian children. The original project had provided the participation of thirty-six children from 4 to 6 years old; however, due to difficulties in reaching participants to join the online survey, only 6 families (6 children and 12 parents) participated, out of a total of 41 individuals who had manifested interest). To assess selective trust, the classical paradigm was used, which involved a naming task and two potential informants with distinct reliability histories (i.e., one informant always provides the wrong name of an object and the other always names it correctly). To assess coparenting, the Coparental Relationship Scale was used, which was delivered to parents via google forms. The results indicate that parents' scores on 3 subscales of the Coparental Relationship scale [e.g. coparental support (mother), coparental sabotage (mother) and coparental support (father)] are directly related to the performance of their children in the Selective Trust task. The results also suggest correlations between the scores of mothers and fathers on 6 subscales of the Coparental Relationship Scale. In conclusion, the present study also demonstrates that online data collection is a possible tool for experimental research in psychology, facilitating the participation of people who live far from universities or who are in social isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, although dissemination via social networks has not achieved the expected results.