International Journal of Behavioral Development

This paper's major aim is to illustrate how competition and co-operation are causally interrelated in the social life of nonhuman primates. In many species, competition for resources and mates commonly leads to xenophobic alliances and to the formation of intra-group dominance orders in which coalitions and alliances play a major role. In this sense, competition fosters co-operation. After briefly reviewing the nature of alliances in primates, this paper focuses on matrilineal dominance systems, which characterise many species of the Cercopithecidae family (macaques, baboons, etc.). In these societies, females socially inherit their mother's rank above lower-ranking matrilines with the result that kin rank next to each other. This paper summarises 10 years of experimental research on the composition and dynamics of alliances in a captive group of Japanese macaques (Macacafuscata). The main experimental paradigm consisted in manipulating the composition of the group, thereby dismantling existing alliances and inducing the formation of new alliances and new rank orders. Results reveal the existence of a complex interplay of kin and nonkin alliances responsible for the acquisition of rank and, later, for the maintenance of rank relations within and between kin groups. Opportunistic, selfishly motivated interventions in conflicts, performed by juveniles sharing the same targets (common targeting principle), appear to account for the initial formation of alliances in these dominance systems and, possibly, in various other situations as well. Such relatively simple processes may have paved the way for ontogenetically and phylogenetically more sophisticated forms of co-operation, such as reciprocity involving delayed benefits to the donors.

Combining co-operation with other behaviours is hypothesised as a successful strategy for competing for resources. Studies were conducted with 4- to 8-year-olds from India, Malaysia, South Africa, and the United States. Four children were given the opportunity to view a cartoon (the resource), providing two children helped make the cartoon available to a third child for viewing, thereby relegating the fourth child to a bystanding position. The children quickly learned to co-operate, however, viewing times varied significantly between them, suggesting that they were competing against each other even while co-operating. The inequitable outcomes appear due to individual differences in the ability to combine helping others with more competitive behaviours. Children from different cultures were very similar in their behaviour as well as in their production of inequitable outcomes. These findings suggest the presence of a culturally independent strategy that could be viewed as evolutionarily stable.

The goal of this study is to analyse sources of variation, residing within the individual or within the relationship, in the ability to balance co-operative and competitive behaviours in a dyadic context. The ability to balance these two tendencies can be considered fundamental to successful adaptation within a social unit because co-operation may be essential in raising offspring, competing with other groups or in generating resources, whereas egoistic behaviour may protect the individual from exploitation or otherwise enhance reproductive success. Research is reviewed on the influence of social structures and relationships on co-operation in peer groups, and the origin and developmental significance of individual differences in co-operative abilities. Finally, a research programme investigating the conjunction of kin and peer relations is described, emphasising the role of affective synchrony, behavioural contingency, and reciprocity in shaping and sustaining co-operative behaviour as a conditional strategy.

This paper presents an evolutionary perspective on children's resourcedirected behaviour in peer groups. It is argued that reciprocity is theoretically expected to be the fundamental rule of resource exchange in peer relationships of friendship. Children are therefore expected to be attracted to peers who are similar to themselves on a wide variety of traits. These traits are viewed as resources in peer relationships, and individual differences in these traits represent a resource environment for children. In this paper, the resource environment represented by individual differences in several evolved motivational systems will be emphasised. The discussion focuses on such three evolved systems, the sensation seeking/impulsivity system, the human affectional system, and the behavioural inhibition system. It is concluded that individual differences in these systems are important for understanding friendship and sociometric status in children's peer relationships.

The theory of evolution focuses on the ultimately (i.e. genetically) self-serving nature of co-operative and competitive relations among children. The self-serving goals of co-operative relations are mediated by biases in social judgement largely ignored by developmental psychologists. Individual differences in heritable behavioural styles are viewed as resources of varying value in different social contexts. Limitations in the a-priori predictive power of evolutionary theory are discussed.

The papers in this special section illustrate the subtle interweaving of co-operation and competition as individual strategies, in primates and humans. These strategies can be strongly influenced by cultural context, and by individual/relational characteristics. The Charlesworth/LaFreniere paradigm provides opportunities for examining these, and could be analysed further in games theory terms; as can alternative paradigms. Friendship is one important relational characteristic, and its causal links to reciprocity might be examined further in terms of attachment theory and genetic similarity theory. An attachment theory approach may give insight into cultural differences in the co-operation/competition balance.

Canadian adults use cues that are part of adult speech (voice quality and mouth movements) to create perceptions of prelinguistic, 3-month-old infants as communicative partners. To what degree do cultural differences modulate social attributions of infants? It is thought that Japanese pay less attention to the visual cues that accompany speech, and so we hypothesised that, compared with Canadians, Japanese adults would be less likely to use mouth movement cues, but equally likely to use voice cues, in forming social perceptions of infants. To test this hypothesis, a video tape of 3-month-old, vocalising infants was presented to three (n = 25) groups of adults in Japan and in Canada. The tape was constructed with dubbing so that all combinations of acoustic (syllabic/vocalic) and visual (mouth moving/not moving) conditions were represented. The conditions of tape presentation differed for the three groups in each nation: Audio/Video, Audio-only, Video-only. Infants were rated on characteristics of social favourability and communicative intent. In the absence of audio cues (Video-only group), adult ratings were influenced by the infant's mouth movements and by the adult's culture. Although both Canadians and Japanese gave higher ratings of social favourability and communicative intent to infants whose mouths moved, the preference for mouth movement was significantly weaker for Japanese. The fact that Japanese paid less attention to features of the mouth of the infant is consistent with past cross-cultural research and with the minor role of facial cues in Japanese Sign Language. Our research demonstrated that adults apply cultural rules of adult conversation when responding to preverbal infants.

This study investigated the extent to which predictions of preschool cognitive and language performance based on perinatal risk and SES measures could be improved adding measures of home environment and first-year performance on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. The longitudinal sample of 53 female and 41 male children was subdivided into "low-risk" and "high-risk" groups based on perinatal risk scores. Results at 3 and 4 years of age are similar to those reported by Siegel (1982) and Smith, Flick, Ferriss, and Sellmann (1972), despite the use of a sample in the present study which did not have the extreme perinatal risk conditions found in samples used by previous investigations. The classification accuracy achieved using the Siegel Risk Index and SES items was high for both risk and age groups. The use of the HOME subscale scores generally resulted in improvements, particularly in classification accuracy. The results show that a variety of perinatal and social-environmental measures are important for predicting child outcomes across different ages and argue for the usefulness of considering individual predictor variables rather than summed predictors in predictive modelling.

The relationships between an indicator of child difficultness and a set of maternal and familial factors were examined in three samples: ages 3-12 months; 12-24 months; and 24-36 months. After initial attempts at using a traditional psychometric approach to measuring difficultness had resulted in a methodologically questionable indicator, factor analytical techniques were employed to develop an alternative indicator of difficultness for each sample.

Maternal anxiety was significantly correlated with child difficultness in all three samples. Mother's effectiveness, nervousness, extroversion, and contentment showed the strongest correlations in the age group 12-24 months, and particularly in the male subsample. Familial and demographic factors showed no associations with difficultness in any of the samples.

The similarity between these findings based on a Danish sample and those reported in previous studies involving other nationalities confirms the notion of a reliable, relatively culture-independent influence of personality characteristics of the rater on measures of infant and child difficultness.

Japanese and US 4- and 5-year-old children and their mothers were studied in situations designed to examine attachment-related behaviours, feelings, and representations. Separation and reunion behaviours, conversations about separation, and child-rearing patterns were examined in relation to culture, gender, and internalising symptoms. Japanese and US dyads did not differ in overall levels of security and sensitivity in separation and reunion behaviours, based on a rating system developed by Crowell, Feldman, and Ginsberg, (1988). However, Japanese children showed more amae (desire for bodily closeness) behaviour than US children. Amae was positively correlated with internalising symptoms for US children but not for Japanese children. Cultural differences in dyads' discussions of separation issues and in maternal child-rearing patterns also were identified.

Locus of control of reinforcement refers to a generalised problem-solving expectancy reflecting the degree to which individuals perceive reinforcements as contingent on their own behaviour (internal control) or on some external force such as luck, chance, or fate (external control). The present study tested predictions based on Rotter's social learning theory that mothers of children with internal control expectancies would provide more contingent reinforcement, support, and encouragement of independence than mothers of children with external control expectancies. The interaction of 51 children and their mothers was video-taped while they attempted puzzle-solving tasks of two difficulty levels. No analyses were significant for the easy level task. In contrast, the difficult task produced several significant findings. Mothers of boys with internal control expectancies provided more contingent support in response to their sons' difficulties and were less likely to respond to their son's difficulties by performing the task for their sons or by watching them struggle. Surprisingly, mothers of girls with internal control expectancies were more likely than mothers of girls with external control expectancies to ignore their daughters' accomplishments and difficulties. Thus, the results provided partial support for predictions derived from Rotter's social learning theory for the development of generalised control expectancies.

This study investigated the relationships between metamemory, the use of simple memory strategies and memory performance in children aged 4 to 5 years. Children carried out two memory tasks (memory span for pictures, free recall of toys), and their recall and use of strategies while carrying out these tasks was recorded. They also completed two metamemory tasks: predicting memory performance and responding to a nonverbal questionnaire concerning knowledge about memory-relevant variables. The metamemory questionnaire scores were significant predictors of memory performance in both tasks. In addition, some of the strategy variables were negative predictors of performance. Off-task behaviour reduced recall, as did naming (an unexpected result), for free recall of toys. Naming items at recall (but not at presentation) reduced recall in the memory span task. There was also some positive evidence that children who consistently named pictures at presentation had higher memory spans than children naming at recall only or using no strategies at all. It was concluded that both metamemory knowledge and the use of simple strategies are significantly related to memory performance in young children, but that these relationships are modest.

The development of the comprehension and verbal articulation of the concept of war precedes the development of the concept of peace by several years. The implications of these findings for the norms, values, and attitudes towards peaceful and non-peaceful behaviour are discussed. It is argued that a "state of peace" is not necessarily the baseline or "normal situation" and that war and a "state of war" are not merely social inventions or the result of cultural deviations, but that war is institutionalised in our culture. Peaceful and non-peaceful behaviours are products of the interaction between human propensities (i.e. predispositions) and the contents of the sociocultural structure, and the sociocultural structure itself is the historical product of the interaction between the same propensities and the environment. In any attempt to undermine the institution of war and to permit the emergence of the institution of peace, these mutual interactions will need to be considered.

A set of transitivity tasks was solved on two occasions by 634 2nd through 6th grade primary school children. Transitivity scales were constructed for both occasions using Mokken scale analysis. Combining the results, one final scale was constructed for use in future research. The order of the scale tasks according to their difficulty level was the same on both occasions. Analysis of the scale scores of one group retested after 16 weeks and two control groups revealed an absence of effects due to memorisation or test experience. It was concluded that the final scale is useful as a transitivity measure in longitudinal research.