Abstract

This study compared the performance of students who cooperated on an instruction writing task with students who worked alone. The effects of transfer from a cooperative experience to an individual writing task was also assessed. A total of 36 students were recruited from introductory psychology classes and were randomly assigned to a cooperative or individual condition. The results of the study showed that students in the cooperative condition significantly outperformed the individual group on a measure of the communicative quality of the writing on both the initial task and on the transfer task (p s <.01). No differences between the groups were found on a measure of the completeness of the written instruction on either task (p s >.05). It appears that cooperating dyads can improve the communicative quality of their instruction writing.