Abstract:

The sharing characteristics of cooperative activities include cooperative partners responding to each other’s actions and intentions, modifying one’s behavior according to the partner’s actions, acknowledging one’s own and others’ goals as well as the joint goals, recognizing the obligations of the partner and providing support if needed, and simultaneously conceptualizing both their own roles and perspectives along with those of others. Furthermore, individuals are inclined to share the cooperation outcomes equally, which is also a key characteristic of cooperative activities. Infants and toddlers are able to understand the sharing characteristics of cooperative activities. For example, they could form shared intentions and joint goals with partners; when the partners have difficulties in accomplishing their roles, they could offer help actively; they could understand their own and the partner’s roles and integrate them into a shared representation; they also tend to distribute the resources equally after cooperation. The current paper proposes future directions in researches on the characteristics of cooperative activities, the characteristics of cooperative partners, the role of emotion and language in infants and toddlers’ cooperation, and also research methods and instruments.

Key words: infant and toddler, cooperation, shared intentionality, joint goal, sharing behavior