Effects of Dyadic Interaction on Argumentive Reasoning

The object of this research was to provide an explicit test of the hypothesis that engagement in thinking about a topic enhances the quality of reasoning about that topic. Engagement took the form of a series of dyadic discussions of the topic of capital punishment. At both age levels examined--early adolescence and young adulthood-this dyadic interaction significantly enhanced quality of reasoning, relative to a more minimal, single-occasion dyadic engagement or a control condition limited to repeated elicitation of the participant's own opinions and arguments. The range of different arguments increased from pretest to posttest, suggesting a process of social transmission of new knowledge. In addition, however, 10 different types of qualitative improvement in the form of reasoning appeared in both age groups. Primary among them were a shift from 1 -sided to 2-sided arguments, arguments based within a framework of alternatives, and metacognitive awareness of coexistence of multiple views. Process analysis of the dialogues provided evidence of a variety of different forms of interaction contributing to change.