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the topic of ownership, has grown out of interest in
children's friendship and sharing behaviors (Staub &
Noeremberg, 1981). Eisenberg-Berg, Haake & Bartlett (1981),
improving on an earlier study (Eisenberg-Berg, Haake, Hand &
Sadalla, 1979), found that 2 1/2 to 3 year old children who
were told a toy was theirs to keep were more likely to
maintain possession of the toy, to verbally and physically
defend it and to share it less. In another study of 2 1/2
to 3 year olds, Eisenberg, Bartlett & Haake (in press) found
that possession of a toy was not interpreted as an ownership
cue. They also found that many of the children could
correctly identify the owners of familiar objects. Rodgon &
Roshmon (1976) found that slightly younger children (14 - 32
month olds) could not identify the owners of familiar
objects. In sum, the developmental literature does show
that pre-school children aged 2 to 3 are beginning to
understand the rules of ownership and the language of
ownership, particularly in reference to themselves.
However, none of the studies cited attempted to elaborate
upon what the rules of ownership might be.
Finally, one study within the domain of psychology
pertains directly to the topic of ownership and deserves
discussion in detail. In a statistical tutorial concerned
with multi-dimensional scaling and cluster analysis,
Rapoport & Fillenbaum (1972) collected demonstration data on