Research addressed two questions: (1) Does collaborative problem solving lead to greater learning among children than independent work? and (2) Does children's expertise and that of their partner influence learning? To address these questions, the performance of 5-year-old novice and expert singletons copying a Lego model was compared to that of…

Researchers studied the effect of cognitive conflict between peers in a collaborative problem-solving task in which the relationship between participants could not be described as "expert-novice" and in which development was potentially possible for all. A total of 156 subjects between 5 and 9 years of age, inclusive, participated in the…

Studies examining the influence of peer pressure on the drinking behaviors of college students have focused primarily on undergraduates. Very little is known about the drinking patterns of graduate students. To compare drinking patterns of undergraduate and graduate students, 57 college freshmen, 20 sophomores, 24 juniors, 26 seniors, 46 graduate…

This paper reports on work done as a part of a broader case study on conditions influencing staff development in an elementary school setting. It found that although teachers universally emphasized the importance of peer interaction in their development, their descriptions of the actual interactions in which they took part were modest in scope.…

Adolescence is a time when formal abstract thought becomes possible, enabling the individual to work through the highest stages of morality. Adolescents' understanding of religion and their commitment to it seem to differ sharply from those of children. It has been proposed that adolescents are likely to change, expand, or abandon their religious…

Attitudes toward the academically gifted were examined in 83 experienced teachers and 100 juniors and seniors enrolled in a teacher education program. Using a questionnaire developed by Tannenbaum (1962), the characteristics of athleticism, diligence, and academic brilliance were examined as they affected perceptions of hypothetical high school…

This study examines the normalcy of adolescent risk-taking and proposes that the social adventures of adolescents have significance for the development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships and self-identity. To evaluate the narrative role of shared risks in transforming different types of relationships, an interview procedure was…

Research and numerous model programs suggest that sport plays an important social role. Particularly among youth, sports and professional athlete role models help deter juvenile delinquency. An overview is presented of current efforts to involve young people, particularly inner-city black youths, in athletic activities. A majority of sociological…

The effects of prompting by peers on the rate of completing assignments and on the correspondence of noon-time plans with the amount of actual studying exhibited the same evening was observed with 15 undergraduate university students. Subjects were provisionally accepted students enrolled in a one credit pass/fail course. Students initially earned…

To examine the nature of sex differences in children's speech during play, 10 boys and 10 girls in kindergarten were videotaped continuously during 10 minute dyadic play sessions involving non-sex-typed toys. Each child participated twice -- once with a same-sex peer and once with an opposite-sex peer. The videotapes were coded according to whom…

An adolescent's learning patterns are developed throughout the student's socialization process, suggesting that peer pressure may influence learning. Female college students (N=15) aged 19-21 participated in a pencil-maze learning task performed while blindfolded. The task was presented in three categories of stimuli conditions: (1) normal…

The decisions and attitudes of sex-stereotyped and androgynous individuals (as defined by the Bem Sex Role Inventory) were compared in a social conformity paradigm and on two measures of locus of control. The conformity paradigm consisted of 160 trials in which subjects predicted one of two possible stimuli after hearing predictions of two other…

This experimental study investigated (1) the effects of cognitive dissonance on the acquisition of conservation by field dependent (FD) and field independent (FI) elementary school students, and (2) the relationship between cognitive style and cognitive development. In the first phase of the experiment 248 students from kindergarten through third…

The effects of peer interaction as it relates to equilibration in the development of map drawing activity was studied in 72 fifth graders. The children were pretested and placed into 36 same sex pairs for training on the basis of Piaget and Inhelder's six-stage sequence of map drawing ability. A discrepancy (above, below or at the same stage)…

The purpose of this paper was to show how women medical students are socialized into their student role. The sample group was made up of 24 groups of six medical students, up to half of whom were women. The data were collected from responses to a questionnaire administered to the members of each group at the beginning of the semester and again at…