Maintenance of Cooperative and Helping Behaviors in Reconstituted Groups

Abstract

The authors conducted a 1-year investigation of whether children, who had been trained in the previous school year to cooperate, were able to use the skills they had been taught in reconstituted groups without additional training. Sixty-four 4th graders, who had participated in training in cooperative group behaviors in the previous year, were assigned to the trained condition; 84 4th graders, who had not received any training, were assigned to the untrained condition. The children worked in mixed-ability (high, medium, low) gender-balanced groups (2 boys, 2 girls). Results indicate that the children in the trained groups were consistently more cooperative and helpful than their peers in the untrained groups, although they had not received “refresher” training in cooperative group behaviors.