Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

To investigate children’s awareness of authority to changerules, we showed children (ages 4-7) videos of one childplaying a game alone or three children playing a gametogether. In the group video, the game rule was initiated either:by one of the children, by three children collaboratively or byan adult. They then were asked whether the characters in thevideos could change the rules. Children believed that thecharacter could change the rule when playing alone. Theirresponses to the group video depended on how the rule wasinitiated. They attributed authority to change rules only to thechild who initiated the rule, unless the rule was createdcollaboratively. We also asked children whether they couldchange norms (school/moral/artifact norms) in daily life; andfound moral/artifact distinction in children’s endorsement ofnorm changing. These results suggest that children recognizeflexibility in changing rules even in preschool years.