THE JAPANESE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

In the thesis, the characteristic of developmental turning point at the age of 9 or 10 is analyzed from the viewpoint of the development of interests at puberty. According to Vygotsky, there are three phases in the development of interests at puberty, that is, the preparatory, negative and affirmative phases. The developmental turning point at the age of 9 or 10 corresponds to the preparatory phase of the development of interests. The preparatory phase of the development of interests is provided for by a latent, sexual maturation occurring in the depths. It is characterized by absence of any particularly clear dominant intentions or especially keen interests, that is, by a certain lack of general stimulation. It contains the elements of both the negative phase and the affirmative one in an embryonal, undeveloped and unseparated form. Therefore, from the viewpoint of the development of interests, the developmental turning point at the age of 9 or 10 is a prologue for which a real, complete change occurring in puberty is prepared.

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The turning point of development around the ages of 9 and 10 years is especially critical for high-functioning pervasive developmental disorders (HFPDD) children. In this study, in order to grasp their fundamental needs, their unique way to understand others' mind was considered in light of the type of mentalization and compensatory strategies. While typically developing children acquire the theory of mind around 4 years of age based on intuitive mentalization, HFPDD children achieved it at last around 9 years of mental age depending only on propositional mentalization. To compensate their lack of intuitive mentalization, HFPDD children manage to anticipate others' behavior using verbal ability. Propositional mentalization without intuitive mentalization make them possible to speculate others' mind, but also often let them to misunderstand others. As a result, it was suggested that there are three fundamental needs for HFPDD children: (1) to reassure themselves about their relationship with others, (2) to acquire a sense of achievement, and (3) to develop their communication competence. It was finally indicated that clarifying the form and role of their speech is the important challenge in order to understand their internal world.

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According to Flavell, Flavell, and Green (1983) and Wellman & Estes (1986), even 3 or 4 year old children are able to distinguish between reality and imagination. However, research by Harris et al. (1991), Subbotsky (1994) and not a few others have shown that 5 or 6 year olds can lose the ability to clearly discriminate between the two. In response to situational or contextual demands, a child's cognition of reality wavers. Such wavering aligns along the axis of age and thus could be described as fluctuation along the vertical axis. On the other hand, in the field of clinical observation of Post-Traumatic Play, where traumatic experience is re-enacted from the victim's point of view as well as that of the assailant's, there are reported cases in which attitudinal differences were stated even though the point of view was the same. These waverings do not align around the age axis; less vertically aligned, their axis is horizontal. With this premise, our present research, as base data for practical case study of play in child-care, proposes a new view of a horizontal fluctuation in the realm of the imagined.

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Most of the studies on the preschool children's naturalistic entry behavior in play have examined the effect of the negotiating strategies, such as asking like "can I join you?", or proposing something about present play, etc. However, it is even obscure the effect of the strategies because many studies have found that it is usually difficult for preschool children to enter the high level organized play. On the other hand, we can often observe the cases as follows. In the course of the negotiation something accidental, for example a participant stumbling on something to the ground, happens, it leads the target child's success of entry. This is the phenomenon the strategy researches have entirely overlooked. 336 anecdotal episodes with preschool children's naturalistic entry behavior in play at nursery were collected and analyzed in two aspects. First, we replicated the strategy effect research and found the similar results including the limited effectiveness of "can I join you?" strategy. Second, we extracted 11 success episodes by/with the accidental events and analyzed and found a common feature. That is, in the course of the negotiation, when something accidental happens, it causes the emotional reactions such as laughter, crying etc. in play group, leads the temporal looseness of the coherence of the group (TLCG). We concluded that this TLCG plays the important role in the entry success episodes of preschool children.

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