Development of formal reasoning during successive peer interactions.

Abstract

Studies have shown that preoperational children working with peers in a variety of problem-solving contexts achieve higher levels of reasoning than do children working individually. The present study extended these findings developmentally and longitudinal by testing the effects of different kinds of sociocognitive interactions on college students' attainment of formal operational reasoning. Ss were randomly assigned to either dyadic (experimental) or individual (control) problem-solving conditions and were given a series of increasingly more difficult formal operational tasks across 6 sessions.