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The Effect Of Peer And Adult-Child Transactive Discussions On Moral Reasoning, Ann Cale Kruger

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Publications

Piaget (1932) hypothesized that children's interactions with peers during middle child hood are essential to their moral reasoning development. To test this hypothesis, 48 female focal subjects (M age = 8.6 years) were paired with either a female agemate or their mother. All focal subjects were pretested and posttested for moral reasoning abilities. In the intervention, the adult-child and peer dyads engaged in consensus-seeking discussions of two moral dilemmas. Focal subjects' moral reasoning at pretest and posttest and their use of reasoning (transacts) in the intervention discussions were measured. As predicted, focal subjects paired with peers showed significantly more sophisticated …