2003 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A STUDY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN'S UNDERSTANDNG ON MIND
| Project/Area Number |
13610116
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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 | CHIBA UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
WAKABAYASHI Akio CHIBA UNIVERSITY, FACULTY OF LETTERS, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, 文学部, 助教授 (30175062)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2001 – 2003
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| Keywords | personality traits / theory of mind / ability of mind reading / trait words / attribution / prediction of behavior / childhood |
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| Research Abstract |
Research on the development in children's understanding on mind might be based on children's understanding of personality traits. This research was constructed in four experiments. In first experiment, we investigated how does children attribute personality trait words to themselves and well known others. The result showed that children in early childhood tended to attribute mainly positive trait words to both themselves and well known others whereas children in middle and late childhood tended to attribute both positive and negative trait words equally to themselves and others. In second experiment, children were asked to attribute trait words to illustrated fictitious characters based on given information. The result showed that in the case of information on behavior and appearance of character was contradictive, children tended to attribute trait to the characters based on behavior information than their appearance. In third experiment, children were asked to predict character's behavior whose trait information was given under certain condition. The result showed that children in early childhood tended to take stereotyped (socially desirable) attribution for the character, whereas elder children could to predict the character's behavior appropriately. In the fourth experiment, we investigated how children discriminated sarcasm from white lie. The result suggested that children in early childhood was difficult to understand sarcasm, and elder children could discriminate sarcasm from white lie only under the condition which a character who said sarcasm was described in negative trait words.
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Research Products
(4 results)
