constructive competition in preschool

Sheridan, Sonja; Williams, Pia

doi:10.1177/1476718x06067581

“…By the time children reach preschool, informal competitions such as being the first to the toy box have become ubiquitous features of their daily routine [29]. Preschoolers spontaneously describe photos of potentially competitive situations (e.g.…”

Section: Using Competition To Test the Scope Of Overimitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Preschoolers spontaneously describe photos of potentially competitive situations (e.g. a girl and a boy running side-by-side) in terms of winning and losing, are able to give detailed accounts of which peers usually win in competitive contexts [29], and attach greater value to success in competitive settings [30]. Additionally, whereas older children and adults show a long-term negative relationship between competition and intrinsic motivation [31,32], competition seems to actually enhance preschoolers' interest in and motivation to master novel tasks [33 -35].…”

Section: Using Competition To Test the Scope Of Overimitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Scope and Limits of Overimitation in the Transmission of Artefact Culture*

Lyons¹,

Damrosch²,

Lin³

et al. 2011

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Children are generally masterful imitators, both rational and flexible in their reproduction of others' actions. After observing an adult operating an unfamiliar object, however, young children will frequently overimitate, reproducing not only the actions that were causally necessary but also those that were clearly superfluous. Why does overimitation occur? We argue that when children observe an adult intentionally acting on a novel object, they may automatically encode all of the adult's actions as causally meaningful. This process of automatic causal encoding (ACE) would generally guide children to accurate beliefs about even highly opaque objects. In situations where some of an adult's intentional actions were unnecessary, however, it would also lead to persistent overimitation. Here, we undertake a thorough examination of the ACE hypothesis, reviewing prior evidence and offering three new experiments to further test the theory. We show that children will persist in overimitating even when doing so is costly (underscoring the involuntary nature of the effect), but also that the effect is constrained by intentionality in a manner consistent with its posited learning function. Overimitation may illuminate not only the structure of children's causal understanding, but also the social learning processes that support our species' artefact-centric culture.

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“…Preschoolers spontaneously describe photos of potentially competitive situations (e.g. a girl and a boy running side-by-side) in terms of winning and losing, are able to give detailed accounts of which peers usually win in competitive contexts [29], and attach greater value to success in competitive settings [30]. Additionally, whereas older children and adults show a long-term negative relationship between competition and intrinsic motivation [31,32], competition seems to actually enhance preschoolers' interest in and motivation to master novel tasks [33 -35].…”

Section: Using Competition To Test the Scope Of Overimitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The scope and limits of overimitation in the transmission of artefact culture

Lyons

¹

,

Damrosch

²

,

Lin

³

et al. 2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Children are generally masterful imitators, both rational and flexible in their reproduction of others' actions. After observing an adult operating an unfamiliar object, however, young children will frequently overimitate, reproducing not only the actions that were causally necessary but also those that were clearly superfluous. Why does overimitation occur? We argue that when children observe an adult intentionally acting on a novel object, they may automatically encode all of the adult's actions as causally meaningful. This process of automatic causal encoding (ACE) would generally guide children to accurate beliefs about even highly opaque objects. In situations where some of an adult's intentional actions were unnecessary, however, it would also lead to persistent overimitation. Here, we undertake a thorough examination of the ACE hypothesis, reviewing prior evidence and offering three new experiments to further test the theory. We show that children will persist in overimitating even when doing so is costly (underscoring the involuntary nature of the effect), but also that the effect is constrained by intentionality in a manner consistent with its posited learning function. Overimitation may illuminate not only the structure of children's causal understanding, but also the social learning processes that support our species' artefact-centric culture.

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“…Modern democracy is based on competition enabling the change of political elites (Wojciszke 2012). Competition can contribute to self-improvement and also to mutual improvement of the competitive parties (Fülöp 2004(Fülöp , 2009; it may increase motivation to learn (Sheridan and Williams 2006) and may even improve social relationships. Competition can contribute to self-improvement and also to mutual improvement of the competitive parties (Fülöp 2004(Fülöp , 2009; it may increase motivation to learn (Sheridan and Williams 2006) and may even improve social relationships.…”

Section: Cooperation Competition and Citizenshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

When and why do young people tend to cooperate?

Zalewska

¹

,

Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz

²

2013

Citizenship Teaching &Amp; Learning

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when and why do young people tend to cooperate? ABstrActThe study explored young people's tendency for cooperation in different social conditions and explanations of behaviour given by them. Cooperation seems to be an important part of citizenship behaviour. Here, it is defined as a tendency to maximize common payoff. According to the Homo economicus theory, people are egoistic entities and should make rational decisions based on maximizing personal payoffs. According to the conception of Homo reciprocans, people tend to be cooperative only if their perceive partners' behaviour as fair. In the context of contemporary research, both of these theories over-simplify behaviour, since tendency to cooperate depends on differences in culture and economic development, as well as on situational rules. In the present study, the Ultimatum Game was conducted to explore students' cooperative behaviour (accepting proposals) as a response to Selfish, Equal or Altruistic offers in three conditions -'face to face', 'town to town' (long distance, with a partner from another town) or 'country to country' (with a partner from another country). This modification of standard experiment procedure was unique and allowed to examine the role of situational context. Altogether 1013 students (aged 9-19) from Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom participated in the game as acceptors. Their cooperative behaviour depended on offers made by partners. However, the patterns were moderated by game conditions: young people tended to cooperate mostly in response to equal offers and in the 'face-to-face' condition and to punish (not cooperate) partners with the same nationality ('face-to-face' or 'town-to-town' condition) for Selfish offers and foreigners ('country to country' condition) for Altruistic offers.

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constructive competition in preschool

Cited by 26 publications

References 10 publications

The Scope and Limits of Overimitation in the Transmission of Artefact Culture*

The Scope and Limits of Overimitation in the Transmission of Artefact Culture*

The scope and limits of overimitation in the transmission of artefact culture

When and why do young people tend to cooperate?

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