Identity and influence / 1 Running Head: IDENTITY AND INFLUENCE Gender identity, social influence and children’s conversations

This paper explores the relationship between gender, processes of argumentation and cognitive change in children’s social interaction. 120 children (average age, 9.5 years) discussed a moral dilemma with a same age peer. The style of children’s conversations differed between same sex (boy-boy and girl-girl) pairs and boy-girl pairs suggesting that social status forms of influence (stemming from a child’s gender identity) can act to obstruct the effective communication and acceptance of certain arguments (or more epistemic aspects of influence) in conversation. Further analysis of conversations points to the importance of addressing differences in perspectives when reaching agreement on this “developmental” task. Results are discussed with reference to children’s representations and resolutions of socio-cognitive conflict. Identity and influence / 3 Identity and influence in children's social interactions: Exploring the relationship between gender, argument and cognitive change INTRODUCTION There is now substantial evidence linking social interaction with cognitive development. This evidence comes from a diverse range of fields including conservation abilities (Doise, Mugny & Perret-Clermont, 1975; Ames & Murray, 1982; Russell, 1982), the acquisition of scientific knowledge (Howe, Rodgers & Tolmie, 1990; Howe, Tolmie & Rodgers, 1992) and socio-moral development (Kruger, 1992; Leman & Duveen, 1999). Whilst few would dispute that interaction leads to advances in reasoning, there are stark differences in accounts of how these advances are achieved. Broadly speaking, we can identify two “schools of thought” (Tudge & Rogoff, 1989; Leman, 2002). On the one hand there are those who emphasise the ways in which knowledge is transmitted from one individual to another. On the other are those who conceptualise the process of interaction as a forum for the construction of new knowledge. Asymmetry in knowledge between children (or between children and adults) is a central feature of the “transmission account” (Roazzi & Bryant, 1998; Russell, Mills & Reiff-Musgrove, 1990). In short, a condition for development through interaction is that a novice is paired with an expert (or a more advanced thinker) and acquires some part of this expert’s knowledge or skill. It could be argued that the transmission account, with its roots in Vygotskian theory, provides us with what might be described as a formal learning model of development (Wertsch & Tulviste, 1992). Of course, such a description is something of an over-simplification; the magnitude of any asymmetry is, for instance, an important concern in determining whether interaction will or will not have beneficial effects on reasoning (Wertsch, McNamee, McLane & Budwig, 1980). Yet the important point is that processes of transmission Identity and influence / 4 or transfer including imitation (Saxe, Guberman & Gearhart, 1987; Greenfield & Lave, 1982), tutoring (Rogoff, 1990; Phelps & Damon, 1989) and feedback (Tudge, Winterhoff & Hogan, 1996; Siegler, 1995) are proposed as playing a fundamental role in the developmental process. The transmission account is, on the face of it at the very least, a plausible explanation for how interaction can facilitate development. However, the preeminence of the transmission account, and in particular the need for asymmetry in knowledge or skill between those involved in interaction, has been challenged. In a seminal study, Ames and Murray (1982) found that interaction between two nonconservers who had both given different answers was enough to stimulate advances in conservation ability. The results from Ames and Murray’s study appear to indicate that asymmetry in interaction is not a necessary precursor to development (although Russell, 1982, amongst others has reported difficulty in replicating this finding). In light of this finding and their own work Doise and Mugny (1984) proposed a “construction” account – wherein development does not result from the transmission of information but through the integration of diverse perspectives. Interaction can facilitate the process of integration that, in turn, leads to more adequate, decentred and “advanced” forms of reasoning (Doise, Mugny & Pérez, 1998). Some have argued that the transmission and construction accounts can been seen as complementing, rather than competing with one another (Tudge & Rogoff, 1989; Verba & Winnykamen, 1992). In some contexts development might occur through a process of transmission, in others through a process of construction. One obvious way in which these different pathways might be realised is in adult-child and peer interaction respectively. However, it remains to be seen if the two processes do indeed account for the same sort of “development”. Knowledge that is acquired Identity and influence / 5 (created) through different processes might well be represented in different ways: there might, for example, be differences in the stability of constructed and transmitted knowledge or in the ways that beliefs are legitimised (Leman, 1998). A further, rather mulish difficulty for transmission accounts, as Perret-Clermont, Brun, Saada and Schubauer-Leoni (1984) point out, is that whilst we might be able to observe the outcomes of a process of transmission of knowledge from an expert to a novice, the transmission account does not give an explanation as to why an expert’s argument is accepted by a novice. In an expert-novice paradigm, Leman (2002) found that more advanced arguments seemed to be intrinsically compelling to children at an intermediate stage in development. In contrast, less advanced arguments were accepted only when a novice had argued particularly vociferously for his or her position. This issue of acceptance is particularly pertinent for transmission accounts since they suppose that asymmetries in knowledge are necessary requirements for developmental advance. The question of how and why arguments are accepted is closely related to the issue of legitimacy in conversation and, more generally, in cognition. Leman and Duveen (1996), following Piaget, suggested that two forms of influence – epistemic and social status – constitute different sources of influence in interaction by presenting alternative ways of legitimising beliefs. The term “epistemic authority” was introduced by Kruglanski (1989) to designate a source that exerts a determinative influence on the formation of knowledge. Whilst the use of the term by Leman and Duveen (1996; 1999) by no means excludes such a definition, the emphasis here is on the power or authority possessed by arguments (as opposed to individuals) to influence judgements. Epistemic influence is distinguished from the influence of social status in that, with the former, arguments possess persuasive power whilst in Identity and influence / 6 the latter, persuasive power is a consequence of an individual’s position within a social organisational structure of hierarchy. Piaget (1932) distinguished relations of constraint and relations of co-operation that underpinned heteronomous and autonomous moral thought respectively. In the former, authority (or an authority figure) governs a child’s moral thinking. In the latter, there is no authority in relations and children are “free” to construct an understanding of the function of moral rules for themselves. Consistent with his constructivism, Piaget saw developmental significance in the shift from heteronomy to autonomy, from relations of constraint to relations of co-operation, and from a corresponding shift from realism to subjectivism in children’s thinking. With autonomy the child understands how moral rules regulate relations between individuals on an equal basis. Thus the grasp of autonomy is, at once, an intellectual and a social achievement since it corresponds to changes in reasoning and in an individual’s involvement in processes of social construction. Leman and Duveen (1996) explored the interactions of children in two age groups, 6-7 and 11-12 years on a perceptual judgement task. Specifically, children were asked to judge whether two lines in an optical illusion were the same or different lengths. In some conditions children were given expertise in the form of sticks to allow them to “measure” the lines, in others they were not. On this developmentally “neutral” task Leman and Duveen noted that the younger children’s conversations were far more overtly conflictual than those of the older children. Moreover, conflict centred along gender lines; more precisely, the younger children had difficulty accepting the arguments of a girl “expert” compared with a boy expert. Leman and Duveen argued that younger children tended to regard interaction as a contest between two competing positions rather than a forum for discussion and debate in which Identity and influence / 7 children could evaluate arguments. In this sense, younger children’s judgements were more likely to be affected by social status influence which stemmed from the socioorganisational roles associated with a child’s gender identity. Older children, on the other hand, were more likely to be swayed by epistemic influence. In interaction the two forms of influence offer alternative ways of legitimising a judgement. The distinction between social status and epistemic influence parallels distinctions from the social psychological literature between alternative forms of influence amongst adults. For example, with status influence it is social organisational or normative concerns that legitimise judgements. With epistemic influence, on the other hand, legitimacy is more a matter of evaluating the legitimacy of arguments. Leman (1998) drew a parallel between epistemic and status influences and processes underpinning minority and majority influences, suggested by Moscovici (1976; 1980; 1985). Majority influence, according to Moscovici, operates on a “public” or verbal level and is the outcome of an attempt to resolve a conflict of res