Shared Meaning in Boy Toddlers' Peer Relations

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. , 380-391. What is the content of toddlers' peer interactions?This study proposed a new way of answering this old question. Instead of demonstrating what behaviors toddlers directed to each other, we asked what themes they could share. Social interactions with a single, mutually understood theme or topic were said to possess "shared meaning." 2 different play groups, of 6 boy toddlers each, were studied. Dyadic play sessions were videotaped throughout each year. 8 sets of dyad tapes were coded from each year, with each set being composed of all 15 possible pairs from each group. An observational coding system identified 385 social interactions and determined their length, the presence or absence of shared meaning, and specific theme. While shared meaning characterized only a small portion of playtime, toddler boys were able to share 12 identifiable themes, with the most frequent being "motor copy," "object exchange," and "object possession struggle." The hypothesis that longer interactions tend to contain shared meaning was strongly supported by the data. Some evidence of increase in the frequency and variety of shared meanings was found in the second year of life. Also found was the tendency for shared meaning to become more frequent after interactions became longer. The utility of the concept of shared meaning for understanding toddler peer relations was discussed.

The Beginnings of Collaboration in Peer Interaction

“…Observations of toddlers' interaction in play group and day care centers show that children use nonverbal communication to share meanings and achieve interpersonal coordination of actions in social play [Brenner and Mueller, 1982;Musatti, 1983;Stambak and Verba, 1986], A recent study of infants' collaboration in an experimental setting also suggests mutual agreement between unfamiliar children aged 24 to 30 months in interpersonal coordination of actions [Brownell and Carriger, 1991]. However, the authors are cautious in inter preting isolated behavioral indices.…”

Young children’s understanding of violations of property rights

“…Young children (and even some animals) care about physical possession, and indeed many of children's early conflicts with peers are over physical possession (Bakeman & Brownlee, 1982;Brenner & Mueller, 1982;Bronson, 1975;Dawe, 1934;Dunn & Munn, 1987;Hay, 1984;Hay & Ross, 1982;Shantz, 1987). By around 24 months, young children can reliably identify who posseses familiar objects (Fasig, 2000), and their appropriate use of possessive language (''My milk'', ''Mommy's sock'') suggests some nascent understanding even earlier than that (Hay, 2006;Tomasello, 1998).…”

Peer imitation by toddlers in laboratory, home, and day-care contexts: Implications for social learning and memory.

“…Are infants more highly constrained in the type of things they pick up from watching each other's actions, perhaps being limited to immediate mimicry of familiar actions? A few observational studies have reported that more of infant peer imitation (as compared with imitation of adults) is vocal, affective, and gross-motor rather than skilled actions with toys (Bakeman & Adamson, 1984;Brenner & Mueller, 1982;Kuczynski, Zahn-Waxler, & Radke-Yarrow, 1987). As in Piaget's (1962) example of deferred imitation of a peer (Jacqueline copying a temper tantrum she had observed earlier in a playmate), a conservative prediction from these studies might be that infants predominantly retain from their peers simple, fairly nonspecific behavior (Turkheimer, Bakeman, & Adamson, 1989; see also Abramovitch, Corter, & Lando, 1979).…”