Development of Formal Reasoning During Successive Peer Interactions

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 longitudinally 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. All Ss were individually administered pre- and posttest measures of formal operational reasoning. Experimental Ss solved significantly more problems during the interaction phase than did individual control Ss. Among experimental Ss, task-relevant interactions were positively associated with collaborative problem solving, as well as with pretest-to-posttest gain scores.