Much research has investigated how children relate to norms taught to them by adult authorities. Very few studies have investigated norms that arise out of children's own peer interactions. In two studies, we investigated how 5- and 7-year-old children teach, enforce, and understand rules that they either created themselves or were taught by an…

Young children interpret some acts performed by adults as normatively governed, that is, as capable of being performed either rightly or wrongly. In previous experiments, children have made this interpretation when adults introduced them to novel acts with normative language (e.g. "this is the way it goes"), along with pedagogical cues signaling…

In two studies, the authors investigated 2- and 3-year-old children's awareness of the normative structure of conventional games. In the target conditions, an experimenter showed a child how to play a simple rule game. After the child and the experimenter had played for a while, a puppet came (controlled by a 2nd experimenter), asked to join in,…