The Adult-Child Dyad as a Problem-Solving System

Abstract

WERTSCH, JAMES V.; MCNAMEE, GILLIAN DOWLEY; MCLANE, JOAN B.; and BUDWIG, NANCY A. The Adult-Child Dyad as a Problem-solving System. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1980, 51, 12151221. This study investigates the way that mothers and their preschool children divided up the strategic responsibilities for carrying out a problem-solving task which involves making a puzzle in accordance with a model. The interaction of 18 mother-child dyads was videotaped and analyzed for verbal and nonverbal devices used by the adult to regulate the child's behavior. The child's eye gaze to the model was used as a measure of how well he or she was following an effective strategy. It was found that with an increase in age there was a decrease in the proportion of these eye gazes that were regulated by the adult and thus an increase in self-regulated strategic behavior. In addition, it was found that when an older child looked at the model, he or she was likely to carry out the subsequent steps necessary to select a piece and insert it correctly and independently in the copy puzzle, whereas younger children were likely to need additional adult assistance after an eye gaze to the model. This is interpreted as suggesting that older children differed from younger ones in their understanding of the strategic significance of gaze behaviors and that the adults' communicative moves were fulfilling different functions for children at different ages. It is argued that an analysis of how adult-child dyads carry out tasks requiring strategic skills can result in a better understanding of the origins and development of these skills iri independently functioning cognitive agents.