The stability and consequences of young children's same-sex peer interactions

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C L Martin1, R A Fabes

  • 1Department of Family and Human Development, Arizona State University, Tempe 85287-2502, USA. cmartin@asu.edu

Developmental Psychology
|May 24, 2001
PubMed

Insights

Young children’s play partner choices are stable and sex-differentiated. Same-sex play influences behavior, with a binary effect on sex differences and a social dosage effect on individual variations.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental psychology
  • Childhood social behavior
  • Gender studies

Background:

  • Understanding children's social development is crucial.
  • Play is a primary context for social learning and behavior formation in early childhood.
  • Investigating the stability and impact of play-partner preferences offers insights into social development trajectories.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To determine if young children's play-partner choices are stable over time.
  • To examine how these play-partner choices influence children's behavior.
  • To identify specific effects of play-partner preferences on sex-differentiated behavior and individual variations.

Main Methods:

  • Longitudinal observation of 61 children (28 boys, 33 girls; mean age 53 months) over 6 months.
  • Recording of play behavior types and sex of play partners.
  • Analysis of partner preferences for stability and influence on behavior.

Main Results:

  • Children's play-partner preferences demonstrated significant sex differentiation and stability over time, particularly with aggregated data.
  • A binary effect was observed, where increased same-sex play led to more sex-differentiated behavior in both boys and girls.
  • A social dosage effect indicated that the extent of same-sex play in the fall predicted variations in target behaviors in the spring.

Conclusions:

  • Play-partner preferences in young children are stable and sex-typed.
  • Same-sex play influences behavior through both broad sex differences (binary effect) and individual behavioral variations (social dosage effect).
  • These findings highlight the formative role of early social interactions and partner choices in shaping sex-differentiated behavior.

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