The short-term dynamics of social organization in preschool triads

Sequential dependencies in solitary and interactive states of social organization were examined as a function of age, sex, and type of toy in 12 triads of 3 1/2- and 5-year-old children. Each triad was observed during 2 30-min sessions, one in which objects with highly specific functions (e.g., dolls, trucks) were available, and one in which objects with relatively ambiguous functions (e.g., pipe cleaners, cardboard cylinders) were present. The results indicated that, while old and young triads did not differ in the tendency to initiate triadic interaction when the preceding state was solitary, old triads were more likely than young triads to maintain the triadic state and to shift to that state from the dyadic state. Boy triads were more likely than girl triads to remain in a solitary state and less likely to shift to and remain in a dyadic state, though no sex difference was found in the transition probabilities when the preceding state was triadic. Triads were more likely to remain in a solitary state in the presence of high-specificity toys than in the presence of low-specificity toys. Verbal metacommunication was more frequent among old triads than young triads, and it facilitated maintenance, but not initiation, of interactive states. The distinction between initiation and maintenance tendencies was formalized in a Markov model of the dynamics of social organization, and the parameter estimates yielded by the model were used to provide a simplified description of the "main" effects of age, sex, and type of toy. It is argued that models such as this one are useful in circumventing certain restrictions on the possible interpretations of raw sequential statistics.