2002 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
An Evolutionary Psychology Approach to the Development of Children's Strategies in 'Fights'
| Project/Area Number |
13610162
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
教育・社会系心理学
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| Research Institution | AOYAMA GAKUIN UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
SAEKI Yutaka College of Literature, Aoyama Gakuin University, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (60084448)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KOBAYASHI Toshiko Department of Early Childhood Education, Odawara Women's Junior College, Associate Professor, 幼児教育学科, 助教授 (20331499)
GYOUBU Ikuko Department of Media Architecture, Future University-Hakodate, Assistant Professor, システム情報科学部, 講師 (20306450)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2001 – 2002
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| Keywords | evolutionary psychology / Tit-for-Tat strategy / children's fight / pretended fight / three-year old children / four-year old children / theory of mind |
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| Research Abstract |
The present study takes an evolutionary psychology approach to the development of children's social skills for group activities. Especially, we focus on the development of children's strategies in "fights" (including, playful, or pretended, "rights"). It is a well-known fact that the strategy called "Tit-for-Tat" (TFT) is an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS), which leads to mutual cooperation in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma Games. In TFT strategy, the player takes non-cooperative action only if the opponent is non-cooperative. The hypothesis of the present study is that preschool (from 3-5 year old) children would have a innate tendency to adopt TFT-like strategies (variations of the strategy based upon TFT principle) in conflicting situations, such as "fights," including playful fights. We adopted following methods to examine the validity of the present hypothesis. (1) Participatory observations of children's playful activities in kindergartens or nursery schools, (2) Analysis of fa
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iry tales and old legends dealing with resolving conflicts or fights against enemies, to see whether or not the TFT-like strategies are taken as the "best" solution, and (3) Evolutionary Game Analysis by constructing a game-theoretic model for children's group activities in kindergarten. Results indicated that 4-yr old children could takes TFT-like strategies in conflicting situations, while 3-year old children could not take such a strategy. This result corresponds to the results of "Theory of Mind" experiments indicating that 3-yr old children would not understand other people's "mind." The analysis of fairy tales and legends indicated that the TFT-like strategies were frequently taken as the best solution in resolving conflicts against enemies. Game theoretic analysis indicated that the "leader" in group plays would be shaped up through the game-theoretic negotiations among children. Making a "leader" to follow was the most "adaptive" choice for "followers" and making "followers" to follow was also the most adaptive choice for a "leader" in a pay-off relations in children's plays. Less
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