Modalities of social interaction and the elaboration of cognition

This poster examines three factors which we hypothesize as playing a constitutive role in the construction of cognitive skills in testing and didactic interactions: 1) the object of discourse of the social interaction, 2) the institutional context in which didactic and testing interactions take place, and 3) the assumed or perceived role of the adult. Empirical illustrations are presented from a series of studies whose aim is to explore the functioning and intrication of these factors. Our results indicate that there exists an interdependence between children's assessed competence and the context in which it is displayed, suggesting that the social role and status of adult interlocutor as well as the institutional context and its representational systems impact the child's perceptions of the interaction and hence the elaboration of responses in these contexts.