Describing parent-child interaction during exploration: situation definitions and negotiations

A coding scheme based on Wertsch's (1983) extension of Vygotsky's ideas about adult-child interaction in the zone of proximal development was used to analyze parent-child interaction during exploration. Sixty children, 3 to 6 years old, were videotaped while exploring novel objects in 15-min sessions with their mothers and fathers. Clusters of verbal and nonverbal behavior were used to code how participants defined the situation in each 15-s interval of each session in terms of one of nine categories. When parent-child mismatches occurred, the participants' negotiations of an intersubjective definition were coded, and child and parent questions were coded for complexity, complexity and appropriateness of response, and function. Results indicated that parent and child definitions matched almost 80% of the time, usually around exploration by the child with attention of or collaboration by the adult. Fathers tended to be more didactic than mothers.