Posted on 06/28/2022 2:22:46 PM PDT by devane617
Most teachers focus on academic considerations when assigning seats. A new study by Florida Atlantic University psychology researchers is the first to show that these classroom seat assignments also have important implications for children's friendships.
Results of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, revealed that friendships reflect classroom seat assignments. Students sitting next to or nearby one another were more likely to be friends with one another than students seated elsewhere in the classroom. Moreover, longitudinal analyses showed that classroom seating proximity was associated with the formation of new friendships. After seat assignments changed, students were more likely to become friends with newly near-seated classmates than with those who remained or became seated farther away.
"The students in our study spent most of every day with the same 15 or so classmates. By the middle of the school year, there were no unfamiliar peers," said Brett Laursen, Ph.D., senior author and a professor of psychology in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. "Yet when seat assignments changed, new seatmates were apt to become new friends, consistent with claims that exposure alone is not a sufficient condition for friendship. Apparently, proximity transcends familiarity by providing new opportunities for the kind of exchanges that form the basis of a friendship."
Participants in the study included 235 students (129 boys, 106 girls) in grades 3—5 (ages 8–11) who nominated friends at two time points (13 -14 weeks apart). Children attended a public primary school in South Florida that reflected public school students in the state in terms of ethnicity and family income.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Whites at the back please
Our seats were assigned alphabetically
IMHO, it is true even in college. I found people who as freshman lived on the same dormitory floor, or especially the same wing/pod on that floor, tended to remain close friends for all 4 years.
Ov, good. If schools adopt a scheme of rearranging the students seating every few weeks, maybe we could get rid of cliques!
How much did “we” spend on this study?
The field of psychology is the scientific search for research grants and university tenure.
We were all seated alphabetically....................
Every chick I met that was a Psych major was crazy.
Many were quite attractive though.
I think they go into it to find out what’s wrong with them.
I wouldn’t bother to speak to a dude that’s a Psych major.
Our seats were assigned alphabetically
.............................
I was always in the back (W). Irked me.
Cool thing was, when I was a freshman, I was in the jr/sr dorms.. :D
Junior and senior high I always sat next to the same person in every class
Wonder how much grant money they received for reinventing the wheel? Duh!
Same here; and the kids whose last names began with A-M were in the front rows and those with N-Z were in the back. Good times!
Every preschool and kindergarten teacher already knows this - hope they didn’t blow too much gov’t cash on the “study”. Put the smart kids between the dullards, separate the troublemakers and hope something soaks in.
I do NOT recall any such ‘assignments’.
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