COMPETENCES A COMMUNIQUER ET RELATIONS PRIVILEGIEES ENTRE ENFANTS: COMPARAISON ENTRE DEUX GROUPES D'AGE*

The purpose of this study is to analyse the specificity of interactions between preschool friends, whose relationships are built on a voluntary and stable choice of a particular partner. The sample consisted of 18 unisexual triads of children aged 3 to 4 years (9 male and 9 female) from 5 Parisian kindergarten. These triads were compared with 18 others, composed of children aged 4 to 5 years (9 male and 9 female), from a previous study (Werebe et Boudonnière, in press). Each triad was composed of a dyad of friends plus a third familiar partner, all three classmates. The dyads of friends were selected on the basis of the following criteria: (1) a reciprocal and preferential search for one another; (2) a voluntary choice of the friend, without intervention from parents or teachers. The children were videotaped without their knowledge, without adult presence, in a familiar room of their school. The experimental setting was standardized in each of the 5 schools. The experimental paradigm was a variant of the one created by Nadel and Baudonnière (1980, 1982), with an important modification: the ten categories of matching objects were provided in double sets for the three children. Four indices were used for the data analysis: holding and appropriation of objects; offering of objects; competition to hold objects and verbalizations. The findings confirmed the principal hypothesis: that interactions between friends differ from those with the third partner, in both age groups, quantitatively (density of interactions) and qualitatively (reciprocal offerings and verbal communications). Furthermore, the findings revealed that the younger children had more difficulty than the older ones, to manage the triadic situation, especially in this situation with the constraint imposed by the presence of two sets of matching objects for three partners.