Effects of social insertion mode on performance and interaction in asymmetric dyads

So as to study the effect of socio-cognitive mediation in 96 children aged 5 to 6 we introduced and manipulated 2 factors:

1. —One was an ego-boosting representation of the subject’s ability to perform the task. Forty-eight children carried out a classification task individually. Then, twenty-four of them were told how excellent their performance has been. The other twenty-four children were not told anything. They formed the “expert” group.
2. —The other was the representation the children had of others. Each “expert” child was paired with a partner chosen from the children who had not performed the first task (“novice” subjects). Half of them were told how good has been the partner they were going to work with. Twelve of these children were given that information in the presence of their partner and twelve in his or her absence. The twenty-four remaining novices were not told anything.

The results show that:

1. performance was superior when children worked in dyads, and that dyad composition had an effect on the results.
2. Different interaction modes were observed, depending on dyad composition.

It seems that the way a child is seen by his her partner rather than the way he or she sees himself, so far as a task is concerned, determines both interaction mode and level of achievement.