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views on the quality of their friendship. Based on the pattern obtained above, the major re- 
sults regarding the structure of reciprocal friendship perception (i.e., basic measurement 
structure, correlations among the subjective aspects and among the objective aspects, gender 
and grade effects) can also be expected to hold for subgroups of children with differing grade 
level. However, a different picture should emerge regarding the degree of agreement between 
the friends' perceptions of the subjective aspects of friendship (i.e., the correlations between 
the corresponding self-rated and friend-rated aspects). Here, there should be be a marked in- 
fluence of the children's level of socio-cognitive development. 
As outlined above, children's level of interpersonal understanding (i.e., their ability to cor- 
rectly understand others' thoughts and the resulting actions) grows with age (Piaget, 1986). 
Thus, older children should better understand their friends' social signals than younger chil- 
dren, especially when these signals refer to intrapsychic processes that are not very obvious. 
As a consequence, I stated in the General Hypothesis 2 that older children's perceptions of the 
subjective aspects of friendship should show higher positive correlations with their friends' 
perceptions than younger children's perceptions. Following from these considerations, and 
using the specific model of reciprocal friendship perception tested above, the subsequent 
specifications of the general hypothesis concerning the developmental influences can be 
made. 
Specification of the General Hypothesis 2: 
Compared to older children, younger children should show a lower degree of agreement with 
their friends' perceptions of Closeness, Fun, and Conflict in Friendship. Because both the 
target children and their friends belong to the same grade level, I expect no difference between 
the target children's average evaluation of the subjective friendship aspects and their friends' 
average evaluation. 
2.2.2. Description of model tests and results 
In Table 8 of the Appendix, I present the various steps of the model testing procedure for 
comparing the four grade levels with respect to their reciprocal friendship perception. Be-