Collaborative Problem Solving in Five‐Year‐Old Children: Evidence of social facilitation and social loafing

Abstract

Children’s problem solving while working by themselves or with a partner was investigated to explore whether young children are susceptible to social facilitation and social loafing. Five‐year‐olds were asked to complete easy or hard puzzles, either alone or with a partner. Half of the children were given instructions indicating that their performance would be evaluated and the other half were not. Children showed social facilitation, in that they performed better with a partner than when working alone under evaluation conditions, with the easy puzzle. Children also showed social loafing, in that performance with a partner was poorer when working under no evaluation than evaluation conditions, with the easy puzzle. Performance with the hard puzzle did not differ whether children worked alone or with a partner, but children working on the hard puzzle under no evaluation conditions performed better than those working under evaluation conditions. The findings suggest that evaluation affects children’s performance in group settings in different ways depending on task difficulty.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank L. Burke, A. Misluk, and J. Wilson for their help in data collection and the parents and children in the Gettysburg area for their willingness to participate in this research.

Notes

1. A second measure of reliability was calculated using kappa (Bartko & Carpenter, 1976). Because we measured duration and because each half session differed in length, we chose to assess the agreement among observers for the occurrence of each behaviour in each half session. Kappa values ranged from .77 to 1.0, with a mean of .90.