The study is based on 10 months' fieldwork and 50 hours of videotaped playground interaction. Girls reportedly avoid negotiation because of their concern with maintaining relationships within intimate social groups while boys, in their hierarchically organized larger groups, celebrate and elaborate argumentation . This paper challenges such notions as well as the idea that girls' games lack complexity or possibility for extensive negotiations. Players recognize that success depends on the good will of turners and many disputes in jump rope thus involve whether the jumper or a turner is at fault.
Children develop complex proof procedures to argue their positions.
In same-sex groups rather than developing a hierarchical structure boys are accepting of different levels of skill, use mitigated as well as aggravated directives, and promote types of interaction in which the skill of the group rather than the individual is valued. Girls' dominance in the game was observed to change over time. In mixed sex groups while boys were learning how to jump, girls frequently set the agenda regarding how the game will be played. However, as boys gained proficiency in the game over a month's time period they became equal partners in calling plays and making decisions. Ethnographically based studies are essential if we wish to examine how the social orchestration of an activity can change over time.