抄録
Many Japanese girls seem to continue to play make-believe using commercial dolls after their early childhood. The kinds of developmental changes that happen to these girls, however, has not been investigated. In this study we observed 27 groups (9 groups at each of three elementary school grades, 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6) each of which was composed of 2 to 6 girls. Their playing with commercial dolls was audiotaped. We found that everyday script-based activities in home-and school-life were played more often than non-everyday activities such as a wedding, but that older graders tended to engage in non-everyday activities more often than younger Often played script-based activities were "getting-up", "dining", and "going-to-bed". Among these only in the going-to-bed script the children's utterances per slot increased with age. The number of different meanings acted out in each script increased with age. One type of meta-narratives, i.e., upsetting the play frame itself, also increased with age. These last two trends were considered to be unique to higher graders.
