Peer collaboration in childhood according to age, socioeconomic context and task

Abstract

From a socio-constructivist approach, this work aimed to analyze the characteristics of peer collaboration in dyads of children according to age (4, 8, and 12 years old), socioeconomic context (advantaged socioeconomic context and disadvantaged socioeconomic context), and task (block construction task and free drawing). Eighty-two children (41 dyads) completed both collaborative tasks. Interaction was videotaped and transcribed in terms of verbal and non-verbal behaviors. Interaction was analyzed by a system of exhaustive and mutually exclusionary socio-behavioral categories. The results suggested that age group and task were related to the main differences in peer collaboration. On one hand, dissociation was a typical scene of 4-year-old dyads, whereas the more socially integrated categories, i.e., Implicit Cooperation, Explicit Cooperation, Collaboration and Conversation Related to Task without Execution, prevailed at 8 and 12 years old. On the other hand, differences associated with the task were referred with codes of higher social coordination. That is, the categories that not necessarily imply a distribution of functions on the basis of an oral agreement predominated in block construction task, as occurred in implicit cooperation and collaboration. In contrast, categories of verbal social regulation of roles (explicit cooperation or conversation related to task without execution) predominated in free drawing. Socioeconomic context influenced on fewer categories compared to the age group and task. The findings are discussed in terms of its developmental and contextual implications, and above all, in relation to the socio-behavioral level (regulated by verbalization) of collaborative interaction.