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Exploring an Age Difference in Preschool Children’s Competitiveness Following a Competition
Literature suggests that resource acquisition compels competition in young children. However, little is still known about the development of preschool children’s competitiveness. In this preliminary study, 166 children (aged 2–4 and 5–6 years) engaged in a dyadic competition which resulted in a winn...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2018
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5855142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29593610 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00306 |
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author | Hu, Yu Zhu, Yi |
author_facet | Hu, Yu Zhu, Yi |
author_sort | Hu, Yu |
collection | PubMed |
description | Literature suggests that resource acquisition compels competition in young children. However, little is still known about the development of preschool children’s competitiveness. In this preliminary study, 166 children (aged 2–4 and 5–6 years) engaged in a dyadic competition which resulted in a winning and a losing group (in a control/non-competition group, participants engaged in a similar task which did not lead to winning/losing outcome), and then experimenters tracked their decisions to compete again with a rival (i.e., an individual they interacted in the previous competition task) and a non-rival competitor (i.e., an anonymous classmate they did not interact in the previous competition task) for a reward, respectively. As expected, results showed an age-related decreasing trend in the percentage of choices to compete with a competitor. However, this age difference was only significant in the control group when participants played with the partner with whom they interacted in the previous game and in the losing group when participants competed with a non-rival competitor. This study contributes to our knowledge of how competitiveness develop in preschool childhood, and calls for further research on the roles of motivation and cognitive control in children’s competitiveness. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5855142 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-58551422018-03-28 Exploring an Age Difference in Preschool Children’s Competitiveness Following a Competition Hu, Yu Zhu, Yi Front Psychol Psychology Literature suggests that resource acquisition compels competition in young children. However, little is still known about the development of preschool children’s competitiveness. In this preliminary study, 166 children (aged 2–4 and 5–6 years) engaged in a dyadic competition which resulted in a winning and a losing group (in a control/non-competition group, participants engaged in a similar task which did not lead to winning/losing outcome), and then experimenters tracked their decisions to compete again with a rival (i.e., an individual they interacted in the previous competition task) and a non-rival competitor (i.e., an anonymous classmate they did not interact in the previous competition task) for a reward, respectively. As expected, results showed an age-related decreasing trend in the percentage of choices to compete with a competitor. However, this age difference was only significant in the control group when participants played with the partner with whom they interacted in the previous game and in the losing group when participants competed with a non-rival competitor. This study contributes to our knowledge of how competitiveness develop in preschool childhood, and calls for further research on the roles of motivation and cognitive control in children’s competitiveness. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-03-09 /pmc/articles/PMC5855142/ /pubmed/29593610 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00306 Text en Copyright © 2018 Hu and Zhu. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Hu, Yu Zhu, Yi Exploring an Age Difference in Preschool Children’s Competitiveness Following a Competition |
title | Exploring an Age Difference in Preschool Children’s Competitiveness Following a Competition |
title_full | Exploring an Age Difference in Preschool Children’s Competitiveness Following a Competition |
title_fullStr | Exploring an Age Difference in Preschool Children’s Competitiveness Following a Competition |
title_full_unstemmed | Exploring an Age Difference in Preschool Children’s Competitiveness Following a Competition |
title_short | Exploring an Age Difference in Preschool Children’s Competitiveness Following a Competition |
title_sort | exploring an age difference in preschool children’s competitiveness following a competition |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5855142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29593610 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00306 |
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