COOPERATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING AND TEACHING IN PRESCHOOLERS

The cur rent study investigated the ontogenetic origins of children's skills of cooperative problem-solving in a task involving two compleme ntary roles Participants were peer dyads of 24, 30, 36, and 42 months of age. Primary dyads were initially presented with ail instrumental p roblem whose solution required them to cooperate by coordinating two c omplementary actions. To further investigate their understanding of th e task, these same dyads were then presented with the same problem but with roles reversed. Finally, after each of these primary participant s had demonstrated proficiency in both roles, each was separately pair ed with a naive peer and given the opportunity to teach the naive part ner the task A clear ontogenetic trend emerged. Even with adult assist ance, 24-month-old children never became independently proficient at t he task. Thirty-and 36-month-old children became proficient mostly ind ependently, bur only relatively slowly and without demonstrating exten sive amounts of behavioral coordination ol the use of explicitly direc tive language to facilitate coordination. Although they did show evide nce of recognizing when a peer was new to the task, children of this a ge engaged in little explicit teaching of naive peels. In contrast, 42 -month-old children master ed the task much more quickly than the othe r children, responded much more quickly and accurately when their role s were reversed, coordinated both their actions and language in the ta sk to a much greater extent, and engaged in more explicit teaching of naive peers. Results are discussed in terms of the developing social c ognitive skills that enable children from 2 to 4 years of age to under stand other persons as mental agents with whom they may share mental p erspectives.