ABSTRACT
Misattribution biases also occur within the context of collaboration. Describing the consequences of collaborative activities, Rogoff (1990) suggested that children appropriate the actions of another person in the context of shared exchanges, making these actions their own, and then adopt the other's actions as self-regulatory routines. For example, when interacting with an adult or peer to solve a problem, children come to appropriate the actions of the other person, assimilating through the other person's actions that other person's
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knowledge (e.g., knowledge of solutions, knowledge of problem-solving strategies), and then execute these actions in new and varied situations. Although the mechanisms underlying appropriation have not been specified (Foley, Ratner, & Passalacqua, 1993; Ratner & Foley, 1994), if children make another person's actions their own they should claim undue responsibility for the outcomes of shared goal-directed activities and misattribute who did what. According to Rogoff (1990), "Individuals are constantly involved in exchanges that blend internal and external .. . (making) it impossible to say whose an object of joint focus or whose a collaborative idea is" (p. 195).
