The Effects of Prior Group Experience, Age, and Familiarity on the Quality and Organization of Preschoolers' Social Relationships

This study assessed the contributions of familiarity, prior experience, and age to the frequency and degree of social participation of preschoolers. A normative analysis of group differences indicated that sex, age, prior peer-group experience, and familiarity did not interact, and all of them independently affected 3- and 4-year-old preschoolers' social play. In addition, we examined the hypotheses that solitary activities represent 1 pole of a continuum of social involvement and that parallel play is an immature variant of peer sociability. Whereas older and experienced children did spend more time interacting with peers and less time alone than did younger children, there were no age- or experience-related differences in parallel play. Ipsative analyses were made of individuals' patterns of social participation, both in terms of patterns of change across weeks of attendance and day-to-day variations in time spent in different degrees of social participation. They failed to support either of the above-mentioned hypotheses. Rather, they suggested that playing alone is an alternative to playing with others, and that when a 3-5-year-old child decides to become involved with age-mates, the degree of social participation may depend more upon age-graded status than social sophistication. Evidence for less time with adults among experienced children and reciprocal relations between interaction with peers and contacts with adults also suggested that experience with peers may affect preschoolers' choices of interactants as much as the quality of their interactions.