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Engaging in prosocial behavior is costly. By selectively directing prosocial behavior toward individuals with a high probability of reciprocating, we are able to offset these potential costs and maintain a sustainable prosocial system. Often, we determine whether an individual will make a good prosocial partner through the observation of their social behaviors. In the absence of such behavioral information, however, group membership can be an effective heuristic for guiding selectivity. Older children and adults show ingroup bias when engaging in selective social behavior, but studies with samples of children under the age of 4 years have been inconclusive. In part, this may be because studies have often relied on measures of prosocial behavior such as sharing or subjective liking, which are reliant on additional cognitive processes apart from selectivity considerations and which may still be undergoing development early in childhood. These tasks may mask younger children's capacity for selectivity in the ingroup context. The present study recruited 65 2-year-old children with the aim to test the capacity for toddlers to demonstrate group-based selective behavior in a minimal group task. Results suggest that children of this age preference both minimal group members and unlabeled similar others over dissimilar individuals when directing their selective helping, but not sharing, behavior. In sum, the findings suggest that even toddlers have a developing sense of ingroup bias in selective prosocial behavior, and that helping, as opposed to sharing, may be a more sensitive measure of children's group-oriented selective behavior at this age.

Interest in the applications of music in health, social care and community settings are growing worldwide. Rare diseases are a major challenge for public health, particularly in paediatric populations. Previous research has demonstrated music and music medicine benefit children and young people's health and wellbeing; however, this is under-researched in the paediatric rare disease context. This scoping review was conducted to explore music therapy and music medicine as tools to support children with rare diseases' health and wellbeing within healthcare settings. The review investigated the current research on how music is used for children and young people with rare diseases and complex conditions and synthesised the resulting evidence. Results from this review suggest that music therapy and music medicine are beneficial for the health and wellbeing of children with rare diseases and complex conditions, including reduced anxiety, stress and pain during clinical procedures, and increased communication, social and coping skills and enhanced quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The status of school placement in the Republic of Ireland has recently been elevated in importance within a reconceptualisation of initial teacher education (ITE). This paper shares the findings from one case study of a school--university partnership enacted in this regard. The partnership involved a researcher-in-residence at the school championing the concept of a structured authentic democratic partnership. The findings show the impact of a champion at the school site in developing professional conversations among a multiplicity of policy actors. An unexpected finding was the depth of higher order peer cooperation achieved in this first iteration of a structured setting by student teachers. However cultural and contextual challenges abound in seeking to build the trust required to enact authentic partnerships in this regard. The findings have significance for the Teaching Council as they build capacity for new and innovative models of the practicum in ITE.

Supportive parenting is known to protect against psychosomatic manifestations of distress, yet the mechanisms through which this association operates are less clear. The present study evaluates children's self-esteem as a mediator, partially explaining the association between parent–child relationship quality and psychosomatic problems from late childhood to mid-adolescence. Results from a large, nationally-representative Canadian sample indicated that self-esteem partially mediated these associations, and self-esteem accounted for more shared variance between parent–child relationship quality and psychosomatic problems among younger children. Among older children, shared variance with self-esteem explained a smaller portion of this association, but the remaining direct effect of parent–child relationship on psychosomatic problems was larger. These findings suggest that supportive parents protect against psychosomatic problems, and that they do so by promoting self-esteem for younger children and through other mechanisms as children age. Results are discussed in the context of attachment theory and age-related trends in self-esteem development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosocial behavior requires expenditure of personal resources for the benefit of others, a fact that creates a "problem" when considering the evolution of prosociality. Models that address this problem have been developed, with emphasis typically placed on reciprocity. One model considers the advantages of being selective in terms of one's allocation of prosocial behavior so as to improve the chance that one will be benefitted in return. In this review paper, we first summarize this "partner choice" model and then focus on prosocial development in the preschool years, where we make the case for selective partner choice in early instances of human prosocial behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]