Understanding the development of children's concept of justice from the implicit-explicit dimension

The present study investigated the development of children's concept of distributive and procedural justice from the implicit-explicit dimension on the basis of Karmiloff-Smith's Representational Redescription model (1992). The role of empathy in the development of children's concept of justice was also examined.;In Study One, hypothetical scenarios of distribution tasks were used to investigate the development of children's concept of distributive justice. Forty-two 5, 7 and 9-year-old children were asked to firstly complete the distribution tasks in seven scenarios during which distribution behavior and verbal explanation were recorded. They were then invited to complete the judgment task by imagining themselves as a judge who had to evaluate the appropriateness of a child's distributions in the seven scenarios. After malting their judgment, the children received a feedback on the appropriate distributions in the seven scenarios which was presented in picture form as the decisions of a large group of judges. Subsequent to reading this series of pictures in their own pace, the children completed another set of distribution tasks in seven similar scenarios. As predicted, children's performance on distribution behavior (level-I) was significantly higher than their performance on verbal explanation (level-E2/3), indicating a difference between the implicit and explicit representation of children's concept of justice. Children's performance on the judgment task (level-E1) was significantly higher than their performance on verbal explanation (level-E2/3), showing a difference between the representations of level-E1 and level-E2/3. However, participants' performance on the judgment task (level-E1) was significantly higher than their performance on the distribution behavior (level-I). Analysis on the subconcepts of distributive justice revealed that there was no significant difference between children' performance on the judgment task and the distribution behavior regarding the concepts of "equality", "equity", "need" and "mixed sense of justice". Only in the case of the concept of "distribution based on empathy", the performance on judgment was significantly higher than that of distribution behavior.;In Study Two, a real-life group distribution activity was designed to investigate the development of children's concepts of procedural and distributive justice, as well as the role of empathy in the process and outcome of the distribution. Ten groups of 5-, 7- and 9-yeat-old children (four in a group, two boys and two girls) were asked to distribute four kinds of gifts including a piece of cake, a set of 12 crayons, 4 pieces of chocolate and 4 cartoon pins. In the condition without empathetic arousal, the groups freely discussed how to distribute the four kinds of gifts and then distributed among themselves. After distributing all the gifts, the children were asked to respond to a series of questions individually and collectively, through which chances for them to make verbal explanations on the concepts of procedural and distributive justice were provided. Aweek later, the groups received a feedback on just procedures and then completed a similar group distribution task. In the empathetic arousal condition, a volunteer in the group was invited to report a recent event that made him or her sad. After listening to the story, the group of four children continued the group distribution task. Unlike the condition without empathetic arousal, no further feedback was provided, nor was there a second round distribution task.;Investigating the development of children's concept of justice from the implicit-explicit dimension, the present study introduced a new theoretical and methodological perspective into the concerned topic area. With such a new perspective, rich forms of implicit representations of children's concept of justice were found, and refined analyses of the developmental patterns of children's subconcepts of justice were made possible. Taking consideration of the effects of the feedback on the development of children's concept of justice, this study throws light on the practice of moral education in which children may acquire implicit understanding without educators' explicit verbal explanation. There were drawbacks in the design of the judgment task (for exploring the level-E1 in Study One) and in the manipulation of empathetic arousal, which call for an improvement in further research. Developmental studies on the concept of justice could extend their age group below five and beyond nine, with a view to exploring the earlier representation of the implicit level on one hand, and the more mature representation of the explicit level on the other. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).