Shaping Young Minds: The Role of Picture Books in Promoting Prosocial Behavior
Level of Education of Students Involved
Undergraduate
Faculty Sponsor
Dr. Abbie Thompson
College
College of Arts & Sciences (CAS)
Discipline(s)
Psychology
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Symposium Date
Spring 4-24-2025
Abstract
Prosocial behavior is essential for fostering empathy, cooperation, and social harmony. Promoting kindness, sharing, and helping others enhances relationships and community well-being. Engaging with prosocial concepts helps children develop emotional intelligence, moral reasoning, and responsibility. Books are a common way to teach these lessons, entertaining while conveying important moral values (Romaniuc & Vechiu, 2023). Encouraging prosocial behavior early on leads to more compassionate adults and healthier societies.
While books are vital to children's learning, the language within them is often underexplored. Books expose children to various concepts, and they apply the knowledge they gain to real-world situations (Strouse et al., 2018). Our study focuses on the number of prosocial words in picture books.
We analyzed the top 50 picture books from four Indiana counties (N=200) based on library circulation data. Two counties are urban, and two are rural. After transcribing the books, we used LIWC to identify prosocial terms.
Given that children in urban areas likely have more opportunities to socialize, we predict that books from urban counties will contain more prosocial terms. We test this hypothesis using paired samples t-tests, along with frequency and descriptive statistics, to examine the prevalence of prosocial references in the picture books.
Recommended Citation
Ensor, Natalie; McCann, Meghan; Sherling, Emma; Naylor, Katherine; Vela, Noemi; McNamara, Jordyn; and Cuevas, Nayeli, "Shaping Young Minds: The Role of Picture Books in Promoting Prosocial Behavior" (2025). Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 1407.
https://scholar.valpo.edu/cus/1407
Biographical Information about Author(s)
The seven research assistants range from freshmen to seniors, with majors in Psychology, Social Work, and Biology. The members are interested in the Learning and Language Acquisition lab, specifically related to children’s language development and the prosocial terms used within children’s books. The research will be displayed on a wall poster.
This work was completed in collaboration with the Language Acquisition and Learning Lab under the supervision of Dr. Abbie Thompson, Assistant professor of psychology.