In this paper I focus on sequences of interaction among youth where the participants engage in classroom related activities (such as spelling, discussion of essays, etc.). My paper is based on interactional and ethnographic data collected among youth in two different leisure contexts. I discuss how the participants by employment of various…

Three questions are addressed: (1) Are infants as young as six months capable of interacting with a peer? (2) What type of social acts are used during these early encounters? and (3) Do toys facilitate the interactions? (Author/MP)

The behavior of 304 mentally disabled adults was observed in five settings (one residence, four sheltered workshops) during periods when they were free to affiliate with peers. In total, the findings indicated that the variables most predictive of affiliation in the present community settings were also the ones most amenable to personal or…

In the third in a series on the social behavior of mentally disabled clients in community facilities, social choice for various cognitive and physical characteristics and for exposure to others was investigated in five settings. (Author/SBH)

The Infant-Infant Contact Code, developed to observe the social behavior in infants, is described. Results from using this scale with nine infants under nine months indicated that contacts between infants are complex in nature, that there are developmental changes in models of encounter, and that babies take different roles in relation to the…

Evaluated the importance of social comparison processes in sibling and peer interaction. Experiment I assessed the influence of social comparison on male children during mother-sibling interaction and subsequent peer interaction. Experiment II assessed the influence of social comparison during peer interaction on female children's subsequent…

Observations of social and dependency behavior were made on 48 children in two nursery schools. The findings indicate that in settings with higher teacher/child ratios, children interact significantly more with adults and less with peers. (JMB)

This study investigated the effects of teaching sociodramatic scripts on interactions among three triads, each containing two typical preschool children and one child with autistic characteristics. Results supported the inclusion of systematic training of scripts to enhance interaction among children with and without disabilities during…

This study sought to describe the norms of reciprocity in social interaction from the viewpoint of immediate behavioral exchanges by examining the social interaction of preschool peers in a free-play situation. Seventeen 4-year-old children, eight girls and nine boys, were observed during free play activity periods after a picture sociometric test…

This study was designed to: (1) obtain ecological data on the social behaviors of children in the preschool classroom especially in freeplay settings, and (2) identify characteristics of the physical environment and program variables which support, attenuate, or preclude social behaviors and social development. Observations were made of 16 3-, 4-,…

Dyadic free play of 32 preschool children (16 deaf and 16 hearing) was videotaped on two occasions; each child was observed once with a deaf partner, once with a hearing partner. Results are discussed in terms of the social interactions of hearing and deaf children, with particular attention to the characteristics of initiation attempts.…

Social exchange theory was employed to predict instigative helping behavior as a function of two types of resources available to the recipient for reciprocation (social and non-social). The possibility of influencing reciprocation of both types of resources produced significant increases in subjects' helping. (Author)

Presents two studies of preschool children, which test the hypothesis that a child's scores on two factor-analytically derived dimensions of social-emotional functioning are directly related to the frequency and type of his peer interactions. (Author/SDH)