Prevalence and characteristics of infants' prosocial helping and comforting strategies between 11 and 20 months of age

Although limited research suggests that infants can behave prosocially even before their first birthdays, the prevalence and characteristics of these early prosocial behaviors remain unexplored. Indeed, very few studies of prosocial development have included 12-month-old infants or examined how prosociality changes across the second year, and none has assessed individual differences in prosocial strategy use. This study investigated prosocial helping and comforting behaviors in a racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of 221 11- to 20-month-olds (45.2% female; 61% Black; 67.3% low socioeconomic status). At 12 months (n=154), >80% of infants helped an experimenter retrieve out-of-reach items and ~60% comforted their mother in distress. Modest increases in helping were observed across the second year of life. Individual differences in specific helping strategies were detected. Infants who helped by handing an item to an experimenter on one task (rather than placing the item in a target location) also used greater handing on another task; similar patterns were found with placing. Moreover, type of strategy was associated with age and sex: older infants and male infants used more placing. No relation between helping and comforting was detected, indicating that these prosocial subdomains are distinct during infancy. The high rates of helping by 12-months of age and use of individual helping strategies demonstrate that infants have robust prosocial abilities beyond those previously documented. These findings contribute critical information about the typical development of prosocial behaviors in the largest and most racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of infants to date.