Comportamentos cooperativos em crianças pequenas e instrução com monitoramento em uma tarefa de brincadeira

Abstract

In order to investigate aspects of child social interaction in a structured context of play, we categorize cooperative behaviors in young children, considering as relevant contextual variables the presence of the pair as antecedent, the management of available objects to obtain a common consequence, and the instruction with adult monitoring. Eight children aged 25 months and eight children aged 3 years and 9 months (N = 16) participated in the first part of the study. They should perform a double play task, working together to receive a reward at the end, and they could count on the help of the experimenter. In a second part of the experiment, six 25-month-olds and two 3-years and 9-month-olds (N = 10) participated in this experiment, who performed the task without adult help. The cooperative behaviors of part 1 of the study were more frequent compared to those in part 2, indicating that when they are guided in a double activity, children tend to cooperate more. Three-year pairs cooperated more (parts 1 and 2) and younger pairs showed a more frequent number of non-cooperative behaviors (parts 1 and 2). The results point to a greater sensitivity of older children to consequences programmed to be reinforcing.