LIMITING THE DOMAIN ACCOUNT OF EARLY MORAL JUDGMENT BY CHALLENGING ITS CRITIQUE OF PIAGET

The purpose of this essay is to limit two aspects of domain theory's a ccount of early moral judgment via its critique of Piaget's theory. Fi rst, many domain findings are not contradictions of Piaget's work beca use they are predicted by objective responsibility. This leads to the claim that research has not established that children qualitatively di stinguish between moral and conventional events. Second, because domai n researchers' claim that Piaget underestimated early morality is base d on research that typically neglects children's difficulty in evaluat ing intentionality, their related claim that young children judge acti ons is not supported.