What Do Children Feel Guilty About? Christopher Williams and Jane Bybee of Northeastern University were interested in discovering the frequency of guilt provoking events in adolescents. They wanted to establish proof for the hypothesis that age-related changes in children were attributed to developmental changes in cognitive reasoning. Past research has indicted that children with high levels of guilt are less delinquent, more compassionate, and more academic excitable children expressing less guilt in similar situations. It has been site ....