Social behavior and interaction among day‐care center toddlers

Observational sessions on six familiar toddlers (11 to 18 months) in a day‐care center were made to investigate children's social behavior and peer interaction. Results demonstrate that familiar children pay a great deal of attention to each other; that they understand peer's feeling and intentions and they they engage in numerous reciprocal interactions based on physical contact, vocalizing and smiling, giving and taking objects. The pleasure in the shared activity and the emotional sympathy with the peer's feeling, seem to be the dominant features in most of these episodes. The authors observe that daily familiarity enable the children to repeat and ritualize shared gross motor activities in frequent social play episodes.