Development of children's self-regulations in idealized and mother-child interactions

The present study examined relationships among different aspects of adult-child (preschoolers) interactions and children's learning within Vygotsky's “zone of proximal development”. Adult regulations were ranked according to levels of explicitness and were coded to reflect whether they were contingent on children's task activities-that is, whether the explicitness of regulations changed as a function of children's correct or incorrect activities. There were two kinds of interaction conditions: (a) children interacting with their mothers ( n = 20), and (b) children interacting with an experimenter ( n = 9) who was trained to provide maximally contingent kinds of regulations. Interactions were coded during two trials of a puzzle completion task, and children's learning was assessed according to pre- to postinteraction changes on a near- and far-transfer task. Findings supported the hypothesis that adults providing contingent regulations promote children's learning.