Peers are important to learning that involves such activities
as projects, block building, cooperative learning, and any activity
that requires the joint involvement of children. Children’s performance
on a number of cognitive tasks has been found to improve
as a result of social interaction with more advanced peers (Murray,
1982; Perret-Clermont et al., 1991; Roazzi and Bryant, 1998).
Roazzi and Bryant (1998) examined children’s performance on a
simple, inferential task (about numbers) and found that children
who had interacted with more competent peers improved in task
performance when posttested 3 days after the interaction and then
again 3 weeks later. They also found that children who interacted
with peers at their same level of competence did not improve in
performance.