First Impressions Matter: Warm-up play Impacts Toddlers' Cooperative Ability with a Same-aged peer

Introduction

2-year-olds can coordinate their action with same-aged peers, although their ability is not as well-developed as older children (Brownell et al., 2006).

Markers of a cooperative interaction quality such as affiliative or antagonistic behaviour shapes the extent to which cooperative partners can and are willing to attain shared goals (e.g., Endedijk et al., 2015; Schuhmacher et al., 2015).

One possibility is that these social behaviours convey cooperative intentionality (Hunnius et al., 2009).

It remains unknown whether peers' first impression (i.e., the quality of an initial interaction) supports their initial interaction quality supports their future cooperative interaction quality and ability.

Exploring this question is key since many studies on toddlers' cooperative ability rely on an initial warm-up period prior to the cooperative interaction of key interest.

Consistent with spill-over hypotheses, we expected that warm-up affiliation and antagonism would enhance and hinder children's cooperative ability, respectively.

Poster presentation at the SRCD Virtual Biennial Meeting 2021.