The objective of the present paper was to investigate a kind of pro-social behavior, the caring behavior among children in different institutional environments, based on an ethological model. The participants were 30 two-year-old children, of both genders, from three different institutions. These children were followed for two years, through observation sessions registered on video, using the technique of observing the focal subject. The data were analyzed using CHAID (Automatic Detector of Interaction based on Chi-Squared) and repeated measures ANOVAs. The results showed the influence of the social and affective context in the environmental arrangements on the variations of caring behavior among children. The structure of the activities and the degree of risk factors were the elements of the environmental organization which directly affected the frequency and variation of caring behavior, indicating their dependence on the contextual factors of the environment.
Caring behavior; interactions between children; ethology
