Development and Social Cognition in Children

The participants in this experiment were randomly selected children both male and female and ages in groups of three to five years, eight to ten years, and thirteen to fifteen years. Each Wayne State University Psychology 1010 student choose two of these children to interview with parental consent.

Material

The materials needed for this experiment included the standardized interview guide with specific questions for the child interview. The questions included: "What is a best friend," "Who is your best friend? Tell me about him/her," "How do you know he/she is your best friend," and "What do best friends do for you?"

Procedure

Students in the class were asked to interview two children from any of the three categories of children based on age. The selection of which children would be interviewed was done by availability and who could interview what age group. After gaining consent from the parent, the interviewer asked each child the four standardized questions from the interview guide. The responses of the children were heard and written down word for word by the interviewer. There was no training done for the interview with the PSY 1010 students. After interviewing two children each, all the students in the class gathered together based on which age group each student interviewed. The students in each group then coded the responses of the children based on three categories: cost-reward, normative, and empathetic. Cost-reward responses dealt with friendship being based on proximity and similar interests. Normative responses dealt with friendship based on helping one another, sharing, loyalty and common values or roles. Empathetic responses dealt with friendship based on mutual understanding and empathy. The number of responses from each category were then totaled up and recorded.Results

The purpose of the experiment was to look at the social cognition development of friendship over time among children. The predicted outcome of the experiment was that changes would occur in stages among how children perceived friendships. After coding the responses from the children, the following results were recorded: In the three to five year old age group, the number of children interviewed was 12. The total number of sentences was 53. The cost-reward category included 28 responses and counted for 53 percent of the total responses. The normative category included 14 responses and counted for 26 percent of the total responses. The empathetic category included 11 responses and counted for 21 percent of the total responses. In the eight to ten year old age group, the number of children interviewed was 14. The total number of sentences was 157. The cost-reward category included 86 responses and counted for 55 percent of the total responses. The normative category included 40 responses and counted for 25 percent of the total responses. The empathetic category included 31 responses and counted for 20 percent of the total responses. In the thirteen to fifteen year old age group, the number of children interviewed was 20. The total number of sentences was 201. The cost-reward category included 88 responses and counted for 43 percent of the total responses. The normative category included 52 responses and counted for 25 percent of the total responses. The empathetic category included 61 responses and counted for 32 percent of the total responses. The data recorded and calculated can be seen in figure 1 labeled "Percentage of friendship responses." Discussion

The data in this experiment indicates that perception of friendship among children is a continuous learning process. Although as children get older, they value their friends for deeper values such as trust and dependability, the children still think of their friends in terms of proximity and physical characteristics. There seemed to be little difference in the amount of responses coded into the three categories between the age groups. Although the percentage of normative responses increased as the age of the children increased, and the percentage of cost reward responses decreased slightly as the age of the children increased, the results were not as dramatically different as expected. Compared to the results for the Furman and Bierman article, our groups of children did not show as big of a gap in features of friendship as theirs did. The changes in normative responses did not change at all and the empathetic responses in our experiments only increased by about 12 percent whereas theirs differed by about 20 percent (Furman & Bierman, 1983). The reason for that may be that in the article, the experimenters also took into account the sex of the children. Although this did not prove to create that much of a difference, it was still looked at. This may have altered their results to give them a more accurate look at the children's responses. Also, the experimenters in the article conducted three different types of tests with the children, whereas the class experiment only called for one interview. However, there were some similarities with the two experiments. Both proved that no matter what age, common interest and cost reward categories were counted for higher than any other category. Also, both experiments showed that as age increases, empathetic responses also increased, as stated earlier.

The results of this experiment imply that children's concepts of friendship do not change in a staged development pattern. Children do not think of friends one way at one age, and then another way as they get older. It seems that the development occurs in a continuous pattern. As the child gets older, more ideas of friendships are learned and added to their perception.

There are some limitations with the experiment that may have caused the experiment to not be as accurate as it could have been. All ages of children were not included in this experiment. The gaps in ages may have shown us where significant changes in friendship perception could have occurred. Also, as stated earlier, there was no formal training done in this experiment. The interviewers were not trained to ask the questions in a standardized manner. This may have influenced the responses given by the children. Also, different groups coded different responses. One group's interpretation of a child's answer may have varied from another group's. If one group interpreted all the responses, the numbers may have come out different. In the interview, the responses were only classified into three different categories. If more categories had been included, the results would have spanned across a broader range, which may have produced more accurate results. If all these limitations were solved and accounted for, the second attempt at this experiment may produce more accurate results that can give us a better idea of how children perceive the notion of friendship.

References

Furman, W., & Bierman, K. L. (1983). Developmental changes in young children's conceptions of friendship. Child Development, 54, 549-556.