The study explores the evolution of subjects' constructions of role-reciprocal interactions in a story about two ambiguous characters meeting in a singles bar. Patterns of role-reciprocal organization reveal a strong initial tendency to interpret initiative-taking as male behavior. This tendency persists at the expense of intra-role consistency. Microgenetic change in the temporal context provided by story transitions reveals a pattern of increasingly integrative organization, characterized by growth in balanced decentering between perspectives. The suggestion is offered that the development of social knowledge can be understood according to rules shared by the development of other forms of knowledge, whether at the level of ontogenesis or microgenesis.
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