"Follow my lead": What follows after one child's initiative in preschooler triads in a cooperative task?

Peer interactions play an important role in children‘s everyday life in institutional daycare. Sustaining social interactions requires skills as attending to the interaction partner(s), mastering turn-taking and prosocial behavior (Fabes, Martin & Hanish, 2011). If cooperation is needed to master a task, these skills become even more important.
Peer triads represent a complex setting of interactional possibilities of all three children (Ishikawa & Hay, 2006). Initiatives constitute starting points to analyze how social interaction is negotiated in a cooperative task. By suggesting how to proceed one child offers opportunities for social practices. The other children’s reactions to the initiative are indicative for the involvement and social structure.
We therefore ask:
(1) To what extent and how are initiatives responded to by the other group members?
(2) Are there differences between boy and girl groups?
(3) What behavioral interaction sequence follows each initiative?

Poster Presentation at ISSBD Biennial Meeting, Edmonton, Canada, 2012