Much of the research on person perception considers the way in which children describe others and the way in which these descriptions change as they age. Young
children tend to concentrate on physical characteristics and other external phenomena, for example, the clothes that people wear and hairstyles. Older children tend to describe others in terms of personality traits, motives and attitudes. The shift from physical characteristics to internal psychological properties is conventionally thought to occur around the age of 7- to 8-years (Barenboim, 1981; Damon & Hart, 1988; Livesley & Bromley, 1973; Newman, 1991; Oppenheimer & DeGroot, 1981; Peevers & Secord, 1973).
An alternative to a verbal report methodology would be the indirect approach of examining differences in behaviour which would occur as a consequence of a person perception. The guessing games research provides indirect evidence that children are sensitive to the difference between the characteristics of an adult who portrays herself as a competitor and an adult who portrays herself as being cooperative. Thus, the findings that children from the age of 5-years employ tactically strategic behaviour in a competitive situation suggests that children may be sensitive to the psychological attributes of a person from approximately 5-years, in common with other finding in the person perception literature (Bennett, 1985-6; Bemdt & Heller, 1985; Yuill, 1993). Miller and Aloise (1987) have suggested that the verbal report methods often employed to assess children's perceptions of others underestimate their understanding.
8 .6 Co n c l u s io n s
This thesis reports the development of two novel procedures that allow the assessment of anticipatory switches in guessing strategy, a form of tactically strategic behaviour. An exploration of the parameters of these procedures enabled evidence of tactical strategy to be found in progressively younger children. The experiments reported in this thesis indicate evidence of tactically strategic behaviour in children from the age of 5. This age is rather younger than might be predicted from earlier research. The findings of these experiments suggested that tactically strategic behaviour may emerge at approximately 3- to 4-years of age, implying that the study of this age group would have greatest implications for the understanding of the development of tactical strategy in children. Preliminary results encourage further research investigating how tactical strategy is related to both theory of mind and executive functions. However, no strong conclusions can be made about such relationships from the findings of the experiments reported here. Future research should also consider the role of social development in tactically strategic behaviour.
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