| Confessional behavior is one area of moral development which has received scattered attention in the research literature. Although it has been suggested that confession of wrongdoing is an index of both moral development and strength of conscience, very little research has been done to verify these suggestions or to attempt to train confessional behavior, particularly in young children. Stoepker (1983) conducted the first research in this area. With the goal of teaching preschool age children to confess to wrongdoing, he utilized social learning techniques such as modeling, positive and negative consequences, and rule stating to train for imitation and generalization. No clear evidence of learning could be established.;The present study attempted to enhance Stoepker's methodology in the hope of clearly documenting both direct performance and generalization effects. Again with the goal of teaching preschool age children to confess to wrongdoing, the subjects were placed in one of two conditions. The experimental group received an intensive training program incorporating the following social learning teaching techniques: modeling, behavioral rehearsal, prompts, praise, rule stating, material reinforcement and positive consequences. The training was done in four phases with the children progressively being given more control in each phase as a means of helping them generate their own thoughts about confessing to wrongdoing. The control group was exposed to the same activities with a focus on children having fun.;Analysis of the data did not confirm the expectation that the experimental condition children would confess more in both a direct test and a generalization test situation. Neither did Pearson correlation coefficients show the consistent responding between the two tests in both groups as was expected.;The findings were attributed to the more powerful impact of other forces in the children's lives such as parental and teacher attitudes and actual consequences experienced from confessing. The question of whether confession can be trained in young children remains unanswered. Possible solutions and further research such as extending the training over a longer period of time and incorporating it into the preschool curriculum or home training were suggested. |
