Child to Child Interaction: An Observational Study

Child interactions with their peers, facilitates learning important social and language skills which result in greater social participation. This study tried to capture mixed age group childrens interactions to understand childrens interactions in the right perspective. The play situations were video graphed with preschool age children and primary school age children interacting with infants and toddlers. The study was taking up in both urban and rural settings. A high precision technique of video capturing childrens interactions and coding behaviours using Observer Behaviour Software XT 7.0 was used for this research. The behaviours that were exhibited by children while interacting with other children were analyzed using frequencies and duration of interactions. The total sample used for this study is 88 (39 Urban and 49 Rural Video Clipping) 10 minute video clippings. Results indicated that a) Infants, toddlers and preschoolers interactions in play situation indicated that toddlers were most active. In all more positive interactions happened than negative and more rural infants interactions happened than urban infants b) primary school children interacted lesser with younger children, and among them urban children exhibited the least. Rural primary school children indicated better interactions with infants and toddlers. Here too rural younger children showed higher frequencies c) gender differences showed that with preschool children, girls among infants showed higher frequencies of interaction and boys among toddlers showed higher frequencies d) boys among the primary school age group indicated more frequencies of interactions when compared to girls with both infants and toddlers e) more frequently, verbal positive, physical positive and ambivalent behaviours were expressed by children in interactions. Some suggestions for families and teachers are discussed in concluding section.