Humans like to own things. As individuals, we strive for houses and cars, RVs and big-screen TVs. Nations seek to own resources, staking their claim to resources like oil and critical minerals. 

But when does the awareness of ownership begin? When do we first conceive of the idea that something is ours, or an object or resource belongs to someone else? 

Research by Dr. Madison Pesowski, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV), seeks to answer those questions. With $182,500 in funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), she’s embarking on a five-year project that could be very helpful for early childhood educators and families.  

“The long-held misunderstanding is that when two children fight over a wooden block, they just don’t know any better,” Madison explains. “My research suggests that’s not true, and this project will explore how they reason about ownership in general.” 

Madison has since done several studies on the subject, with results showing that young children perceive more than we think they do. Knowing exactly when an understanding of ownership develops, she suggests, will help people working with this age group to more effectively resolve ownership disputes. 

“This may cause a re-thinking of the kinds of explanations we give to children, and how we talk to them in a situation where someone is upset,” Madison says. “If we’re saying a bunch of things a two-year-old doesn’t understand, that’s not helpful, so it’s very important to know what they do understand.” 

A developmental psychologist and director of the UFV’s Kids in Developmental Science (KIDS) Lab, Madison says ownership is seen as an abstract concept, even by adults. We’re never told how to think about it. We just do. 

She started thinking about this a few years ago, when she was working as an educator in a childcare setting. 

“I noticed these arguments where one kid had a toy, and another came and took it. That led to screaming and fighting, and got me thinking about what they were thinking,” Madison recalls. “Later, when I did my honours work at the University of Waterloo with a faculty member who was interested in the concept of ownership, I started thinking about how I’d answer some of the questions I had.” 

A focal point of this project will be showing children stories where a character interacts with someone else’s property without permission. They’ll change the types of action, so that they have different consequences from the owner.  

For example, the person who doesn’t own the property might look at, modify, or take the object.  

“We then present children with pictures of thumbs-up or thumbs-down and ask them whether they think the action is good or bad and whether it’s a little or very good or bad,” Madison says. “If children believe that it’s always wrong for people to interact with others’ property, then they should say that every action is bad, even if it doesn’t involve physically interacting with the object. But if children consider how it impacts the owner, they should be more likely to say that actions that cause temporary or severe outcomes, like modifying or taking something, are worse than actions that don’t impact the owner, like simply looking at it.” 

Gathering reliable data from small children is a challenge. Madison laughs talking about how two- and three-year-olds will randomly get up and walk away when you’re talking to them. The solution, she says, is collecting a lot of data from a large and varied sample to make sure the findings are as reliable as possible. 

From start to finish, the project will take five years. The results, Madison hopes, will be groundbreaking. She also hopes it’s a game changer for the seven students helping her. 

 “They’ll learn about what kinds of methods they can and can’t use, they’ll be in community connecting with preschools and daycares,” Madison says. “They’ll input and analyze data. They’ll get the whole picture of what research is about, and that’s exciting.”