An experimental study introducing a new standardized stimulus set for studying need-of-help recognition in children (NeoHelp)

Abstract

It is a general concern in experimental research to ensure that results do not relate to systematic perceptual differences when comparing responses to stimulus categories of different content. Confounding effects can be prevented by using standardized stimuli and carefully controlling their perceptual properties. The study of socioemotional development so far lacks such stimulus sets. Need-of-help recognition is one important aspect of socioemotional development and is a necessary precondition for active helping. In this thesis, I present the NeoHelp stimulus set that has been created to allow standardized testing of need-of-help recognition with clinical and normative populations of different ages. At this point in time the NeoHelp stimulus set consists of 82 black-and-white comic-like drawings of 15 different everyday situations. These pictures can be arranged into 41 pairs depicting the same agent as either in need of help or not. At the same time control picture pairs can be arranged showing a human or a bird in the same situation. Thus experimental paradigms assessing need-of-help recognition can be implemented using the identical stimulus material as used for implementing control paradigms assessing a basic-level human-animal distinction. In this thesis, I provide evidence that the picture pairs of the NeoHelp are very similar regarding low-level picture properties. In addition I present empirical data obtained from a sample of 80 children with a broad age range (3 to 13 years) for three different mutually controlling and complementing paradigms. The results demonstrate that children correctly categorize the pictures’ content regarding both tasks, need-of-help-, as well as humanbird- distinction. I also show that task requirements coherently determine which aspects of the pictures’ content influence response characteristics. Moreover, standard response characteristics (hit rates and response times) for the selection of stimuli and comparison in future studies are provided.