Assessing social cognition: age-related changes in moral reasoning in childhood and adolescence

Abstract Objective: There is increasing recognition that socio-cognitive skills, such as moral reasoning (MR), are affected in a wide range of developmental and neuropsychological conditions. However, the lack of appropriate measures available to neuropsychologists poses a challenge for the direct assessment of these skills. This study sought to explore age-related changes in MR using an innovative visual tool and examine the developmental sensitivity of the task. Method: To address some of the methodological limitations of traditional measures of MR, a novel, visual task, the Socio-Moral Reasoning Aptitude Level (So-Moral), was used to evaluate MR in 216 healthy participants aged 6–20 years. Results: The findings show a linear increase in MR from childhood to late adolescence with significant group differences between childhood (6–8 years) and preadolescence (9–11 years), and between early adolescence (12–14 years) and middle adolescence (15–17 years). Conclusions: Interpreted in light of current brain development research, the results highlight age-related changes in MR that offer insight into typical MR development and opportunities for comparisons with clinical populations. The findings also provide evidence of the potential of the So-Moral as a developmentally appropriate measure of MR throughout childhood and adolescence.