How to Behave in the Social World: Behavioral Analysis and Modeling for Development of Cognitive Processes

Acquiring several kinds of "models" to recognize the environment and social agents as knowledge and rules to decide one's own next behavior based on the rules is an important aspect of cognitive development. In this study, we investigated the developmental process of children in acquiring and using these "models" in the social world. Children were tested with two experimental TV-game tasks, and we analyzed their behavior precisely from several viewpoints concerning representation of self, recognition of the outer environment, and recognition of the interactive agents. Four and five year-old children showed that they understood contingencies between their own action and visual feedback and memorized the visual environment. Moreover, five and six year olds selected adequate information sources to decide their own next behavior. These data indicated that children developed their own internal "models" for recognizing their environment and making decisions about behavior