Teaching supports the high-fidelity transmission of knowledge and skills. This study examined similarities and differences in caregiver teaching practices in the United States and Vanuatu (N = 125 caregiver and 3- to 8-year-old child pairs) during a collaborative problem-solving task. Caregivers used diverse verbal and nonverbal teaching practices…

Human children 18-24 months of age and 3 young chimpanzees interacted in 4 cooperative activities with a human adult partner. The human children successfully participated in cooperative problem-solving activities and social games, whereas the chimpanzees were uninterested in the social games. As an experimental manipulation, in each task the adult…

Examined the relationship between individual interactional style, individual problem-solving behavior, and family problem-solving effectiveness in 431 intact rural families with 2 children, 1 of whom was in seventh grade. Results indicated that a hostile interactional style directly predicted destructive problem-solving behavior, whereas a warm…

Subjects were eight first-graders with older siblings, half from 2-child families and half from larger families. The four sex combinations of sibling pairs were equally represented. Half the children were aided on the task by their mother; half were aided by their sibling. Comparisons were made by sex and family size. nAuthor/JH)

Effective family problem solving was studied in 97 families of elementary-school-aged children with definite- and indefinite-solution tasks. Incentive and task independence were manipulated. It was found that definitions of effective problem solving based on directly observed measures of group interaction were more valid than definitions based on…