Experimental study of the development of desire for control in preschool chidren.

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The study was investigated to clarify the development of desire for control in preschool children. Children of 5-year-old class ("Nenchu") and 6-year-old class ("Naencho") were subjected in two tasks ; one is quoits task, and the other is lottery task. The formere is skill task, and the latter is chance task. Children were requested to estimate the score which they could obtain before executing each task. And after executing the task and being informed the accomplished score, subjects were asked for again to estimate the score of next experiment which would be carried out a few months later.Main results were as follows :1. An analysis of children's forecasting behavior revealed that children tended to overestimate their own performance in future tasks regardless of age or sex.2. In quoits task as skill task, boys showed higher score of achievement motivation than girls regardless of age.3. In quoits task, smiling was not observed in executing task in both sexes. In lottery task, boys showed higher occurrence of smiling than girls.These results suggest that there may exist sex differences in motivation to achieve or to compete in preschool developmental stage.