Developmental Changes in Young Children's Conceptions of Friendship

The present study examined the development of friendship conceptions from 4 to 7 years of age.Subjects were administered an open-ended interview, a picture recognition task, and a forcedchoice rating task in which they identified the most important characteristics of friendship.Common activities, affection, support, and propinquity were all found to be salient aspects of most children's conceptions.Friendship expectations concerning affection and support increased m frequency with age, while references to physical characteristics decreased.In general, parallel findings were found on the 3 measures, although the results were not as strong on the open-ended interview.The findings suggest that children first learn the overt characteristics of the occupants of the role of friend, but as they grow older they place increasing emphasis on affectively based characteristics.During the course of development, children's conceptions of friendship undergo marked qualitative changes.The pattern of changes is well documented for school-aged children and adolescents (cf Bigelow, 1977, Bigelow & LaGaipa, 1975, 1980, Reisman & Shorr, 1971, Selman, 1980, Berndt, Note 1, Furman & Bierman, Note 2).When asked to describe friendships, young elementary school children emphasize the importance of concrete behaviors such as common activities and helping.As they grow older, children begin to stress the significance of more abstract characteristics of friendship, such as acceptance, understanding, and loyalty.Much less information is available about the early development of these conceptions during the preschool years.Several investigators have asked young children to describe friends or other persons they know, but their results have been disappointing (Livesley & Bromley, 1973, Watt, 1944).Generally the children's descriptions were sparse and lacking in coherence, they usually reported little else but the other's physical appearance.Recently Hayes and his colleagues elicited more extensive responses by specifically asking children why they liked their best friend (Hayes, 1978, Hayes, Gersham, & Bollin, 1980).The reasons commonly given included mutual activities, general play, propinquity, and physical