Young Children's Persuasion in Everyday Conversation: Tactics and Attunement to Others' Mental States

Young children's persuasion tactics, and how these reflected attunement to others' mental states, were explored in archived longitudinal samples of transcribed at‐home conversations of four children, three to five years old. Over 87,000 utterances were examined to identify conversation ‘chunks’ involving persuasion; 1,307 chunks were then coded for who initiated the persuasion, the persuader's goal, tactics employed, the presence of cues about others' beliefs and desires, and whether children attended to such information. Analyses suggested that persuasion exchanges were initiated similarly by children and adults, were stable in frequency and length across time, and involved a limited set of persuasion tactics. Children's attempts to change beliefs increased although explicit mental‐state cues were only rarely available. When such cues were available, children more often than not altered their tactics. Implications for our understanding of children's developing social cognition and theory of mind, as well as the limitations of conversational analysis, are discussed.     

Contextual Variability in Young Children's Gender Ingroup Stereotype

Self-categorization theorists (Oakes, Haslam & Turner, 1994) have shown that stereotypes are not rigid and fixed, and that they vary to reflect variations in the comparative context within which they are formed. In this paper we investigate stereotype variability in a sample of 6/7-year-old children. Participants describe a specific outgroup, and then describe the ingroup (that is 'boys' or 'girls', depending on the sex of the participant). There are two conditions: in condition one the outgroup is represented by adult 'men', if participants are boys, or by adult 'women', if participants are girls. In condition two the outgroup is represented by 'girls', if participants are boys, or by 'boys', if participants are girls. Results show that stereotypical traits attributed to the ingroup change significantly with changes in the frame of reference.     

Dyadic Analyses of Preschool‐aged Children's Friendships: Convergence and Differences between Friendship Classifications from Peer Sociometric Data and Teacher's Reports

Peer sociometrics and teachers' friendship reports were compared in 2179 preschool dyads. One hundred twenty of 306 reciprocated friend dyads from peer sociometric data were also identified as good friends by their classroom teachers, and 301 of 600 of non‐reciprocated dyads in peer data were named as friends by one or both classroom teachers (overall kappa = .16). Friendship classifications from both peer and teacher data had significant relations with variables relevant to peer interactions, social skills, peer acceptance, and teacher‐rated scales (six of seven tests significant for peer data; five of eight significant for teacher data). Multilevel analyses indicated that friendship status effects were not qualified by classroom‐level differences. Findings suggest that sociometric tasks can identify preschoolers' peer friendships and that the range of correlates may be broader in peer‐choice data than in teachers' friendship evaluations.     

Getting Along or Getting Your Own Way: The Development of Young Children's Use of Argument in Conflicts with Mother and Sibling

The development of children's use of argument in conflicts with their mother and sibling during their fourth vear, a period of marked changes in their understanding of others, was studied in 49 children observed at home with their mothers and siblings at 33 and 47 months. Children's use of reasoned argument in conflict increased: however, the proportion used for conciliation and compromise decreased, and children used justifications increasingly to support their own position. Mothers, hut not siblings, changed in parallel to the children over this period. Both the initiator of a dispute and children's expression of affect were related to children's use of argument; children used less reasoned argument when they were upset. Results are discussed in relation to differences in the development of children's relationships with mother and sibling and the importance of the link between affective expression and the use of argument in family disputes.     

Young Chinese Children's Authority Concepts

Using multilevel analyses, we examined the influence of domain (moral, conventional, and personal) and the familiarity of different authority figures (mother, teacher, person in charge, and stranger) in public, school, or home settings in 123 four to seven-year-old Chinese children ( M   =  5.6 years) in Hong Kong. Children affirmed authority more for moral and conventional than personal events, based primarily on punishment avoidance and conventional justifications. Children judged that they should obey mothers more than all other authorities and the person-in charge in the associated setting and the teacher more than strangers. At school, teachers were seen as having more authority over moral and conventional events than mothers whereas at home, mothers had more authority than teachers over all issues. With age, children increasingly evaluated mothers' authority as generalizable across contexts for the moral event; reflecting the importance of familiarity, mothers were seen as having more authority to extend her regulation outside the home, including for personal events, than teachers' authority outside the school.     

The Social Context of Young Children's Peer Victimization

The goal of this study was to investigate differences in the social context of peer victimization for preschoolers and kindergarteners. Data were collected from 168 children. For preschoolers, neither social acceptance nor friendships were significantly related to peer victimization. Instead, playing with peers and exposure to aggressive peers were associated with higher rates of peer victimization. For kindergarteners, exposure to aggressive peers also contributed to the risk for peer victimization, but being liked by peers and having friends were inversely related to victimization, thereby providing a buffering effect. The developmental implications of these findings are discussed.     

Parent and Child Cognitive Representations of Social Situations and Children's Social Competence

The current study examines the relations among parent and child social information processing components and their links to children's social competence. Ninety‐seven kindergarten children and their mothers and fathers responded to open‐ended vignettes that involved conflict with a peer. Goals and strategies for both parents and children were assessed. Results show that there is some consistency between parents and children in the types of goals and strategies that are provided. Further, fathers’ and children's goals and strategies were related to children's social competence but only limited support for children's cognitions as a mediator between parental cognitions and peer competence was found. The implications for the role of social information processing in the development of children's social competence are noted.     

Children's Attention to Others' Beliefs during Persuasion: Improvised and Selected Arguments to Puppets and People

Until now children's attention to the beliefs of people they wish to persuade has been examined experimentally via tasks that were artificial in important respects. To determine whether such research has underestimated children's psychological perspective taking, two studies that manipulated task elements pertinent to ecological validity were conducted. Children in three age groups (3, 4/5, and 6/7 years) were asked (forced‐choice and open‐ended formats) how best to persuade puppets and people, with differing beliefs, to pet and play with various toy animals. Children offered as many or more belief‐relevant arguments in response to forced‐choice as to open‐ended questions. Only the oldest group attended to beliefs more when persuading a person compared with a puppet. Even on more realistic tasks, significant improvement with age across task formats confirmed a developmental trajectory in line with extant reports of children's belief reasoning. The findings support the idea that enhanced social competence corresponds specifically to children's increasing attention to beliefs in social interactions such as persuasion.     

Children's Beliefs About Self‐disclosure to Friends Regarding Academic Achievement

Self‐disclosure to friends is a potentially useful way for children to pursue a range of desired goals. Here we examined reasoning about the appropriateness of disclosing one's own academic outcomes in a sample of 7‐, 9‐, 11‐, 13‐, and 15‐year‐old Chinese participants (N = 150). The valence of (1) the outcomes to be disclosed and (2) the corresponding outcomes for the potential audience for the disclosure was manipulated factorially, and participants judged whether disclosure was advisable and explained their responses. Disclosure was seen as more appropriate under valence‐matching conditions than valence‐mismatching conditions. How participants judged each type of disclosure under valence‐mismatching conditions varied as a function of participant age: As compared with younger participants, older participants considered disclosure of weak performance to a stronger performer more acceptable and disclosure of strong performance to a weaker performer less acceptable. These findings suggest that older children are more likely than younger children to appreciate that self‐disclosing positive performance outcomes can bring social costs, and that self‐disclosing negative performance outcomes can bring social benefits.     

Translating Social Motivation Into Action: Contributions of Need for Approval to Children's Social Engagement

This research examined how children's need for approval (NFA) from peers predicted social behavior (prosocial behavior, aggression, and social helplessness) and peer responses (acceptance, victimization, exclusion). Children (N = 526, mean age = 7.95, standard deviation = .33) reported on NFA and teachers reported on social engagement. Approach NFA (motivation to gain approval) predicted more positive engagement and less conflictual engagement and disengagement. Conversely, avoidance NFA (motivation to avoid disapproval) predicted less positive engagement and more conflictual engagement and disengagement. Some results differed by gender. This study suggests that social motivation contributes to children's peer relationships, providing a specific target for interventions to optimize social health.     

Dynamics of Young Children's Socially Adaptive Resolutions of Peer Conflict

How do young children negotiate conflicts with peers that result in mutually beneficial resolution and peaceful interaction after conflict? A few studies suggest that when children use conciliatory strategies in conflict, socially adaptive outcomes are more likely to be achieved. The present study explores the relative associations of types of children's conciliatory conflict resolution strategies (i.e., prosocial, compliance‐oriented, solution‐oriented, and verbal clarification/apology) with conflict outcomes to contribute to knowledge of the discrete behaviors that might have salience for conflict resolution training. Socially adaptive conflict outcomes were expected to strongly relate to children's resolution strategies of a prosocial nature as well as to teacher or peer interventions encouraging prosocial behavior or empathy. Sampled conflicts (N = 521) were collected through field observations of 107 ethnically/racially and socioeconomically diverse four‐ to seven‐year‐old children. Logistic regression analyses with bootstrap‐based inference suggested that children's prosocial behaviors in conflict were most strongly tied to mutually beneficial resolution and peaceful postconflict interaction, when controlling for relevant covariates. Other conciliatory strategies varied in their association with socially adaptive outcomes. The hypothesis regarding third‐party interventions encouraging prosociability or empathy could not be examined due to infrequent occurrence. Insights for future research on children's socially adaptive conflict negotiations are discussed.     

Continuity in Children's Relations with Peers

Social competence with peers of 55 (27 girls) children was examined from ages one to nine. In the toddler and preschool periods, social competence with peers was observed and rated by independent observers and rated by teachers. Teachers reported on children's social competence with peers at age nine. Children who engaged in more complex play with peers as toddlers were more prosocial, engaged in complex play, were less withdrawn as preschoolers, and were less aggressive and withdrawn as nine-year-olds. Children who were more aggressive and withdrawn as preschoolers were more aggressive as nine-year-olds.     

Young Children's Apologies to their Siblings

When children apologize, they accept responsibility for wrongdoings and act to reconcile social relationships. Apologies to siblings were coded in 40 families that were observed for 9 h when children were 2½ and 4½ years old, and again 2 years later. We found that sibling apologies were rare, generally simple in form, and more frequent after physical harm than after rights violations or verbal harms. Spontaneous apologies were more frequent than apologies mandated by parents, and spontaneous apologies increased with age, as did reconciliation following apologies. By 6 years of age, children reacted more favorably to spontaneous than to parent-mandated apologies, demonstrating their sensitivity to this one index of the apologizer's sincerity.     

Understanding Solitude: Young Children's Attitudes and Responses Toward Hypothetical Socially Withdrawn Peers

The goal of the present study was to explore young children's attitudes and responses to different forms of social withdrawal by eliciting responses to hypothetical vignettes. Participants included 137 children (49 boys, 88 girls) in kindergarten and grade 1 classes (M_age = 75.94 months, SD = 9.03) in Ottawa, Canada. Parents rated child characteristics, including shyness, unsociability and aggression. Children were also interviewed individually and presented with a series of hypothetical vignettes describing the behaviors of shy, unsociable, aggressive and socially competent children. In response to each vignette, children were asked a series of questions designed to assess their perceptions, attitudes and responses toward each child behavior. Results suggested that young children made surprisingly sophisticated distinctions between shyness and unsociability, demonstrating differences in terms of attributions of behavioral intent, liking and sympathetic responses. In addition, unsociable children evidenced a distinct pattern of responses to hypothetical peers. These findings add to the growing body of research distinguishing different forms of social withdrawal, and shed some light as to why unsociability in early childhood may not be so benign.     

艾丽丝·蒙罗小说中的叙事结构

本文从两个方面探讨艾丽丝·蒙罗小说的叙事结构故事 :抽象的叙事结构和具体的叙事结构。前者是指潜在的、可资分析的、能够生成众多叙事作品的普遍结构 ,法国叙事学家布雷蒙提出“逻辑说” ,叙事学家格雷玛斯则从语义学的角度 ,提出了“角色模式” ;后者是指叙事作品中的情节的安排 ,从故事时间与叙事时间的关系 ,其小说的叙事结构可分为三种 ,即对比结构、倒叙结构和开放结构     

Low-Income Mothers' Conversations About Emotions and Their Children's Emotional Competence

This study examined the linkage between low-income mothers' conversations about emotions and their children's understanding of emotion. Forty-five low-income preschoolers and their mothers were videotaped while viewing a wordless picture book designed to elicit talk about emotions. Three maternal and child emotional language behaviors were coded from the videotapes: (a) unelaborated comments about emotions; (b) explanations about the causes and consequences of emotions; and (c) empathy-related statements. The children's questions about emotions were also coded. In a separate interview, the preschoolers were administered tasks that assessed emotional expression knowledge, emotional situation knowledge, and emotional role-taking. The results revealed that emotional situation knowledge was positively predicted by mothers' empathy-related statements. Mothers' explanations about the causes and consequences of emotions were uniquely related to emotional role-taking ability. There were very few correlations between the mothers' and children's talk about emotions. Results are discussed in terms of the functional significance of mothers' emotional language for young children's emotional competence.     

Attachment, Temperament, and Preschool Children's Peer Acceptance

This study examined the relations between preschool children's attachment security, temperament, and peer acceptance. Ninety‐eight preschool children and their mothers were recruited through childcare centers in the southeast. Mothers and their children participated in two two‐hour home observations. Attachment security was assessed using the Waters Attachment Behavior Q‐set (AQS) completed by observers, and mothers reported on their children's temperament. Standard picture‐sociometric nominations and paired‐comparisons were used to measure children's peer acceptance. Results revealed significant associations between security and temperament. In addition, both attachment and temperament made significant and unique contributions to peer acceptance whereas temperament was found to be a stronger predictor of children's peer rejection. These findings underscore the dynamic interplay of inter‐ and intrapersonal factors that influence preschool children's peer relations. Implications of the findings for theory building and future research are discussed.     

Children's Appraisal of Peer Rejection Experiences: Impact on Social and Emotional Adjustment

In the current study, 95 children of different social status classifications (rejected, neglected, average, and popular) were exposed to hypothetical vignettes designed to assess their ‘generalized’ rejection sensitivity (GRS) and a mild social rejection experience designed to assess their ‘on‐line’ rejection sensitivity (ORS). Measures of internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed through a composite of peer‐ , parent‐ , and self‐reports. As expected, sociometric rejection was associated with more internalizing and externalizing problems. More importantly, both types of rejection sensitivity were associated with internalizing and externalizing problems after controlling for the effect of peer rejection. High levels of GRS were associated with more internalizing problems for both boys and girls. In addition, rejection sensitivity emerged as a significant moderator of the relation between rejection and externalizing problems. The nature of the moderating effect varied as function of type of rejection sensitivity and gender. Rejected girls with low GRS and rejected boys with high ORS displayed the highest levels of externalizing behavior problems.