Does popularity determine who leads in a dyadic cooperative task? Subtle differences between children with and without developmental disabilities.
Kids with developmental delays lose the silent body-beat that guides typical teamwork, so you must assign leader-follower roles outright.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Roy's team watched the pairs of 8- to young learners build a marble track together. Half the pairs had two typical kids. The other half had one child with a developmental delay and one typical peer.
Small motion trackers on each child's wrist let the researchers see who moved first and who copied. They also asked each kid, 'Who was the leader?'
What they found
In typical pairs the popular child usually led and the two bodies moved in smooth, matched rhythms. Those pairs finished the track faster.
In mixed pairs the popular child still claimed to be the boss, but the motions were jerky and out of sync. Poor synchrony predicted the worst task scores.
How this fits with other research
Granieri et al. (2020) saw the same partner-mismatch problem in adults. Autistic adults rated their autistic friends more warmly than their typical coworkers, even though outsiders scored both conversations low. Together the two studies show the mismatch hurts across ages.
Candini et al. (2019) found a similar break in 'social space.' After a tool-use game, only typical kids stood closer to their partner; kids with autism kept the same wide buffer. Both labs hint that natural cooperation cues slip past kids with developmental delays.
Setoh et al. (2017) review adds why: early motor differences in autism ripple into later social tasks. Weak motor timing could explain why the wrist-trackers caught choppy, unsynchronised moves.
Why it matters
Next time you run a cooperative game, don't wait for a leader to 'just emerge.' If the pair includes a child with developmental delay, name the roles out loud: 'You pass, you place.' One simple sentence can replace the silent body cues that usually organise typical teams.
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Join Free →Before the next cooperative Lego task, point and say: 'Marco, you are the builder; Leo, you are the supplier.' Switch roles halfway.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Popular indivuals are usually academically high achiveving and also often leaders. Children with developmental disabilities are usually not popular among their peers. In dyadic cooperative tasks, the popular member is often the leader, as shown by self-reports and observational research. It is unknown whether this macro-level behaviour is reflected in micro-level synchronisation patterns of the movements of dyads who are engaged in a cooperative task. AIMS: The goal of the present study was to investigate whether popularity differentially affected the leading-following behaviour of dyads consisting of children with and without developmental disabilities. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Children with (n = 106) and without (n = 183) developmental disabilities performed a tangram puzzle task individually and cooperatively. While performing the task, they stood on a Nintendo Wii Balance Board that registered their postural sway. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Although we found some similarities between dyads with and without a developmental disability based on both popularity and task performance, the most striking difference occurred in low performing dyads. In those, dyads with a developmental disability had no clear leader or follower. CONCLUSION: Especially in dyads with developmental disabilities it is important that there are clear roles, since the worst performance was observed when roles were absent.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2019 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2019.103455