Friendship Interaction Skills Across the Life-span

Abstract

By the early part of the second year of life, children begin to direct markedly social behaviors toward one another (Brownell & Carriger, 1990; Ross & Lollis, 1987). These behaviors soon become increasingly complex and organized. At first, a toddler might simply look and smile at a peer; next he or she might look, smile, vocalize, and wave a toy, all at the same time. Relatively quickly, such actions are combined to form complex routines that contain all of the basic features of adult interaction. By age two-and-a-half, children can signal interest in one another, exchange roles, sustain a common focus in play, and make repeated efforts to gain each other’s attention (Haslett, 1983; Rubin, 1980). It is through such primitive “conversation” that youngsters develop specialized patterns of interaction leading to their earliest friendships. By age 4, children actually begin to use the word friend to distinguish between familiar and nonfamiliar peers (Hartup, 1983).