Longitudinal study of the development of children's societal thinking in everyday life

本研究的目的在于阐明儿童社会性思维在日常生活中的表现及其发展过程。为了达到这一目的，我们对1997年的108名二年级学生和107名三年级学生进行了为期4年的连续调查，并使用了由12个问题组成的同一份问卷，其中包括在日常生活中的一些不同情景下，他们对柠檬水价格的决策，例如，“当许多人聚集在一起看足球比赛时，你的柠檬水是涨价还是降价？”“当许多孩子聚集在一起参加运动会时，你会提高还是降低柠檬水的价格？“本研究的结果如下：1）两组被试在简单语境中的正确回答率均高于复杂语境。复杂的背景包括儿童在做决定时必须考虑的多种条件，例如道德、同情心、人的性格。因此，儿童社会思维在日常生活中的发展与构成情境的相当多的条件有关。2）在40年间，儿童的几种反应的变化有两种模式。第一个是孩子的反应集中在正确的反应与他们的年龄（模式1）。第二种是儿童的反应在正确反应和不正确反应之间徘徊（模式2）。模式2在语境复杂的问句中表现突出。因此，儿童社会性思维的发展路径与儿童思维的语境有关。

The purpose of this research is to clarify the figure of children's societal thinking in everyday life and the process of its development. To achieve this purpose, we carried the 4years continued investigation into effect, that used same subjects who were 108 second grade students and 107 third grade students in 1997, and used same questionnaire that consisted of 12 questions included decision making on their lemonade's price in some different contexts of everyday life, for example, "When a number of people have gathered to see a soccer game, do you raise or cut the price of your lemonade? " "When a number of children have gathered to participate in an athletic meeting, do you raise or cut the price of your lemonade? "Results of this research are as following.1) The rate of correct response of both subject groups was higher in the simple context than in the complex context. The complex context includes plural conditions of which children have to take account at the time of decision making, e.g. morality, sympathy, character of person. Therefore, the development of children's societal thinking in everyday life is concerned with considerable conditions that constitute the context.2) In changes of several children's responses during 4years, there were two patterns. The first is one that children's responses concentrate on the correct response with their years (pattern 1). The second is one that children's responses walk up and down between the correct response and the non-correct (pattern2). Pattern2 was seen prominently in questions with a complex context. Therefore, the route of the development of children's societal thinking is concerned with the context in which children are thinking.