Do mothers' perceptions and concerns about preschoolers' peer competence predict their peer-management practices?

Although parents' management behaviors have been associated with children's competence with peers, relatively little is known about factors that may determine parents' management practices. In this study, measures of mothers' perceptions and concerns, mother' peer-related management practices, and children's social competence were obtained with 62 preschool children and their mothers. Results indicated that mothers differentiated between prosocial behavior and peer sociability when assessing children's progress relative to peers. Girls received higher progress ratings from their mothers than did boys, and mothers tended to view their children's prosocial skills as less well developed than their sociability toward peers. Mothers who reported lower estimates of their children's sociability tended to have higher levels of concern and were less involved in the management of their children's informal peer relations. Conversely, mothers who managed children's social lives by facilitating informal peer activities and promoting children's social autonomy tended to see their children as more sociable with peers.     

Longitudinal patterns of anger reactivity and risk‐taking: The role of peer‐context

The current study examined the interplay between children's dispositional anger and susceptibility to peers' influence in increasing children's risk‐taking behaviors. Participants in the current study were children from a larger study of temperament and social–emotional development who were followed across 9, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months. Dispositional anger was measured using mothers' reports across 9 and 48 months. At 60 months, children played a risk‐taking computer game in presence of an unfamiliar peer who watched the child play. The child's risk‐taking was assessed during the game as the unfamiliar peers' reactions were coded based on comments that were peer directed, reflective of praising the target child's performance, or object directed, indicative of excitement toward the game. A latent profile analysis revealed three longitudinal anger profiles across infancy to early childhood: high stable, average stable, and low stable anger. Results suggested that as peers' object‐directed comments predicted risk‐taking independent of children's anger, the association between peer‐directed comments and risk‐taking was dependent on children's dispositional anger. Specifically, when peers praised the target child's performance, children in the high stable anger profile showed increased risk‐taking propensity. Findings are discussed based on the importance of considering both temperamental characteristics and aspects of the peer context in relation to children's risk‐taking.     

Encouraging a peer in need: The impacts of social anxiety and peer familiarity

Extant research has produced conflicting findings regarding the link between social fearfulness and prosocial behavior, with some studies reporting negative relations and others reporting null effects. Furthermore, these studies have focused predominantly on toddlerhood, and few have examined prosociality between peers. The present study investigated whether the link between social anxiety and prosocial behavior (i.e., providing encouragement) varied depending on interpersonal and situational factors (i.e., one's familiarity with a peer, and the level of support sought by a peer, respectively). We tested this question using a multimethod approach, which included ecologically valid stress-inducing task and dyadic design with a sample of 9- to 10-year-olds (N = 447). Results revealed that social anxiety was related negatively to providing encouragement among familiar and unfamiliar dyads. In familiar dyads, however, this main effect was qualified by an interaction with the level of support sought by one's peer. Compared to those low in social anxiety, children high in social anxiety provided relatively less encouragement in response to higher levels of support seeking from their peers. The findings are considered in relation to theorizing regarding the effect of overarousal on children's prosocial behavior.     

Aggressive and Prosocial Peer Group Functioning: Effects on Children's Social,School, and Psychological Adjustment

This study examined the effects of aggressive and prosocial contexts of peer groups on children's socioemotional and school adjustment. Data on informal peer groups, social functioning, and different aspects of adjustment were collected from multiple sources in a sample of elementary school children (149 boys, 181 girls; M age = 10 years). Multilevel analyses indicated that group aggressive and prosocial orientations made direct contributions to children's social, school, and psychological functioning. Group contexts also moderated the individual‐level relations between social behavior and self‐perceptions; prosocial behavior was associated with social or scholastic self‐perceptions more evidently in low prosocial and high aggressive groups. The results suggest that the peer group is an important context for children's performance and adjustment in various domains.     

Strategies for the Study of Individual Development within Naturally-Existing Peer Groups*

The investigation of peer influences on children's development in natural settings rests squarely on appropriate methods to identify those individuals who are influential for a given child. Traditional methods of sociometric ratings or assessments of friendship choices are not intended to identify reciprocal influences in children's peer groups of social interrelationships. In the study of networks within sociology, researchers have focused on the structural properties of children's networks, instead of the psychologically meaningful characteristics of the children who comprise a target child's network. To complement these strategies, a method is presented that can reliably identify those individuals who constitute children's natural peer groups in a setting. This information is used to form composite maps that represent the psychological peer context of a given child. Strategies are outlined for analyzing processes of group selection and socialization among developing individuals and their changing peer contexts.     

Preschoolers’ responses to prosocial opportunities during naturalistic interactions with peers: A cross-cultural comparison

The goal of this study was to better understand similarities and differences in preschool children's expression of needs and prosocial responsiveness to peers’ needs across two culturally distinct contexts. Preschoolers were observed in a semi-naturalistic design across rural Mexico and urban Canada, wherein they were instructed to build a tower with blocks. Three- to 6-year-olds (N = 306; 48% female) were divided into 64 peer groups. We coded for children's expression of needs (instrumental, material, or emotional), responses to prosocial opportunities (prosociality, denial, or no response), prosociality without an apparent need (spontaneous prosociality), and types of prosocial behavior (helping, sharing, or comforting). While instrumental and material needs were expressed similarly across both samples, Tzotzil Maya children expressed fewer emotional needs than Canadian children. Failing to respond to others’ needs, followed by denial, were the most frequent need-provoked response in both countries; surprisingly, only 9% of needs received a prosocial response. Though need-provoked prosociality was rare in both cultural contexts, children engaged in considerable spontaneous prosociality which varied as a function of age, gender, and cultural context. Lastly, Canadian more than Tzotzil Maya children denied emotional and instrumental needs (but not material needs). The findings inform how cultural practices may shape the presentation of needs and prosocial responsiveness in peer interactions.     

The Friendship Features of Preschool Children: Links with Prosocial Behavior and Aggression

This study assessed features of young children's friendships and determined whether the features reported were associated with prosocial and aggressive behavior. Teachers completed the friendship features questionnaires (FFQ) on the mutual friendships in their class identified by the 98 children who were interviewed (M age =3.91 years). Four subscales (support, conflict, exclusivity/intimacy, and asymmetry) were differentiated from the 36‐item questionnaire. Teacher reports of friendship features showed moderate inter‐rater reliability and were associated with teacher reports of aggression and prosocial behavior and peer reports of acceptance and rejection. Friendship support was positively correlated with prosocial behavior, friendship conflict was positively correlated with overt aggression and peer rejection, and friendship exclusivity/intimacy was positively associated with relational aggression and negatively with peer acceptance. Findings are consistent with research on school age children's friendship features and their behavioral correlates.     

Affiliation motivates children’s prosocial behaviors: Relating helping and comforting to imitation

The current study focuses on the motivation that drives children's prosocial behavior by analyzing the association between prosocial behavior and children's imitative tendencies, which is a well‐established indicator of the motivation to affiliate with others. Therefore, we tested 30‐month‐old children (N = 59) in an imitation task and two domains of prosocial behavior, namely helping and comforting. Using a confirmatory factor analysis, we demonstrated that the two prosocial domains were explained by a common factor, which was in turn significantly related to children's imitation. Overall, our findings suggest that affiliative motives should be considered in order to better understand children's motivations to engage in prosocial behaviors.     

Prosocial Tendencies among Chinese American Children in Immigrant Families: Links to Cultural and Socio‐demographic Factors and Psychological Adjustment

The present study examined relations between prosocial tendencies (dispositional sympathy and prosocial behavior) and psychological adjustment using a multi‐method and multi‐informant approach in a socioeconomically diverse sample of first‐ and second‐generation Chinese American children from immigrant families (N = 238, M age = 9.2 years). We tested the concurrent associations between: (a) children's dispositional sympathy (rated by parents, teachers, and children, and observed prosocial behavior), (b) psychological adjustment (parent‐ and teacher‐reported externalizing problems and social competence); and (c) cultural and socio‐demographic factors (children's Chinese and American orientations, family Socioeconomic Status (SES), only child status, and children's age, sex, and social desirability). Results from correlations and structural equation modeling suggested that different measures of prosocial tendencies related differently to children's psychological adjustment. Parent‐ and teacher‐rated sympathy were associated with higher child social competence and lower externalizing problems within, but not across, reporter. By contrast, child‐rated sympathy was associated with higher teacher‐rated social competence, and observed prize donation was associated with lower teacher‐rated externalizing problems. Different measures of prosocial tendencies also showed different relations to cultural and socio‐demographic factors. These findings suggest that prosocial tendencies are not a unitary construct in Chinese American immigrant children: the manifestations of prosocial tendencies and their adjustment implications might depend on the context and/or targets of these tendencies.     

School context influences the ethnic identity development of immigrant children in middle childhood

The present paper describes a study investigating the ethnic identity development of Latino immigrant children (n = 155) in middle childhood (ages 8–11) in a predominantly White community. The study examined how ethnic identity was related to children's school context. School context was operationalized at the structural level, as the ethnic composition of the teachers and peers, as well as the schools' implicit messages about their valuing of multiculturalism; and the proximal interpersonal level, as children's perceptions of peer discrimination and teacher fairness. Results indicated that both the structural and proximal context predicted children's ethnic label choices, the importance placed on their ethnic identity, the positivity of their ethnic identity, and their American identity.     

Children's Perceptions of Family Relationships as Assessed in a Doll Story Completion Task: Links to Parenting, Social Competence, and Externalizing Behavior

This study was designed to examine the links between parenting, children's perceptions of family relationships, and children's social behavior. Seventy‐four children (M age=6.01 years; 39 boys; 35 girls) and their parents took part in the study. Children completed relationship‐oriented doll stories that were coded for coherence, prosocial themes, and aggressive themes. Parents completed a report of their child's social behavior, a parenting scale, and a number of demographic items. Teachers also completed measures of children's social competence and externalizing behavior. Warm parenting predicted both a child's representation of prosocial themes in the doll stories and social competence, whereas harsh parenting predicted both a child's use of aggressive themes in the doll stories and a child's externalizing behavior. These findings support the idea that children are constructing models of relationships out of the early interactions with caregivers, and that they use these representations to guide their social behavior.     

Executive function and theory of mind as predictors of aggressive and prosocial behavior and peer acceptance in early childhood

Executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) are related to children's social interactions, such as aggression and prosocial behavior, as well as their peer acceptance. However, limited research has examined different forms of aggression and the moderating role of gender. This study investigated links between EF, ToM, physical and relational aggression, prosocial behavior and peer acceptance and explored whether these relations are gender specific. Children (N = 106) between 46‐ and 80‐months‐old completed tasks assessing cool and hot EF and ToM. Teaching staff rated children's aggression, prosocial behavior, and peer acceptance. EF and ToM predicted physical, but not relational, aggression. Poor inhibition and delay of gratification were uniquely associated with greater physical aggression. EF and ToM did not predict prosocial behavior or peer acceptance. Added to this, gender did not moderate the relation between either EF or ToM and social outcomes. The correlates of aggression may therefore differ across forms of aggression but not between genders in early childhood.     

Young Children's Prosocial and Aggressive Behaviors and Their Experiences of Being Targeted for Similar Behaviors by Peers

Children's target experiences (as recipients of prosocial peer acts and victims of peer aggression) were investigated for their concurrent and longitudinal associations with prosocial and aggressive behavior. Forty‐four children (initially 22–40 months) were observed in naturalistic interactions with peers during a two‐month period for each of three consecutive years. Results revealed no consistency over time in children's experiences as targets for aggressive or prosocial peer acts, although there was some indication that altruistic target experiences may be stable from the end of the preschool period. Early behavior appeared to affect the way children were later treated by peers, but no support was found for the idea that early target experiences influence later behavior. Prosocial behavior was concurrently and longitudinally associated with prosocial target experiences. Aggressive behavior reduced the likelihood of children being targets of prosocial peer behavior and, over time, also of their being targets of peers’ aggression.     

Emotional Climate in Families Experiencing Homelessness: Associations with Child Affect and Socioemotional Adjustment in School

This study examined associations among family‐level risks, emotional climate, and child adjustment in families experiencing homelessness. Emotional climate, an indirect aspect of emotion socialization, was indexed by parents’ expressed emotion while describing their children. Sociodemographic risk and parent internalizing distress were hypothesized to predict more negativity and less warmth in the emotional climate. Emotional climate was expected to predict observer‐rated child affect and teacher‐reported socioemotional adjustment, mediating effects of risk. Participants were 138 homeless parents (64 percent African‐American) and their four‐ to six‐year‐old children (43.5 percent male). During semi‐structured interviews, parents reported demographic risks and internalizing distress and completed a Five Minute Speech Sample about their child, later rated for warmth and negativity. Children's positive and negative affect were coded from videotapes of structured parent‐child interaction tasks. Socioemotional adjustment (externalizing behavior, peer acceptance, and prosocial behavior) was reported by teachers a few months later. Hypotheses were partially supported. Parent internalizing distress was associated with higher parent negativity, which was linked to more negative affect in children, and parent warmth was associated with children's positive affect. Neither emotional climate nor child affect predicted teacher‐reported externalizing behavior or peer acceptance, but parental negativity and male sex predicted lower prosocial behavior in the classroom. Future research directions and clinical implications are discussed.     

Individual differences and dyadic processes in conversations with peers in middle childhood

The goal of the current study was to investigate the contribution of both trait-like individual differences and dyadic processes to the content of children's conversations. Fifty-two groups typically consisting of four same-sex unfamiliar nine-year-old children (N = 202) interacted in all possible dyads, resulting in six dyads per group. Each dyad completed a 5-min frustration task and a 5-min planning task. Observers coded children's verbalizations into 10 categories and further summed these categories into prosocial (suggest, agree, solicit input, ask, encourage, state personal) and antisocial (command, disagree, discourage, aggress) verbalizations, resulting in 24 variables (12 per task). Across both tasks, Social Relations Model analyses provided evidence of the role of both individual differences [significant effects for actor variance (15 of 24 variables), actor-actor correlations, and intrapersonal correlations] and dyadic processes [significant effects for partner variance (4 of 24 variables), relationship variance (18 of 24 variables), dyadic reciprocity correlations (10 of 24 variables), and interpersonal correlations] in children's conversations with peers.     

Mother–Child Conversations about Emotions: Linkages to Child Aggression and Prosocial Behavior

We examined associations of maternal and child emotional discourse and child emotion knowledge with children's behavioral competence. Eighty‐five upper middle‐income, mostly White preschoolers and mothers completed a home‐based bookreading task to assess discourse about emotions. Children's anger perception bias and emotion situation knowledge were assessed in a separate interview. Children's prosocial behavior, relational aggression, and physical aggression were observed during a preschool‐based triadic play task. Mothers' emotion explanations were correlated with children's emotion situation knowledge and relational aggression. Both mothers' and children's emotion explanations predicted prosocial behavior whereas mothers' use of positive emotional themes was negatively associated with children's anger perception bias. Physical aggression was predicted by mothers' emotion comments, children's anger perception bias, and lack of emotion situation knowledge. Maternal emotion socialization variables were less strongly related to children's behavioral competence after accounting for demographics and child emotional competence. Implications of these findings for future research on emotion socialization are discussed.     

Examining links between affective empathy,cognitive empathy,and peer relationships at the transition to school

The current study aimed to (i) examine associations across features of affective and cognitive empathy, and (ii) explore their independent role for children's peer relationships at the transition to school. Affective empathy was measured using both observations of children's facial affect during an empathy-eliciting event and dispositional affective empathy to peer distress via teacher report. Cognitive empathy was measured using an index of children's proclivity to engage in perspective taking when witnessing the distress of another. Children's theory of mind was also assessed given close links with cognitive empathy. Participants were 114 Australian children (M_age = 67 months, SD = 5 months) assessed across two sessions during their first year of formal schooling. Findings showed that features of children's affective and cognitive empathy were unrelated, but both showed independent associations with children's positive peer relationships (assessed via peer-reported social preference and teacher-rated peer social maturity). The current study provides support for the delineation between features of affective and cognitive empathy in early school-age children, and the importance of understanding both affective and cognitive empathy for children's peer relationships at the transition to school. These findings have implications how we understand both the nature of empathy in childhood and the role it plays in supporting children's positive peer relationships.     

The Impact of Clique Membership on Children's Social Behavior and Status Nominations

The impact of children's clique membership on their peer nominations for social behaviors and status was examined in a sample of 455 third‐ through fifth‐grade children. Social identity theory (SIT) and children's peer group affiliation and context served as primary conceptual frameworks for this investigation. As suggested by SIT, results indicated that children displayed favorable views toward their own cliquemates, nominating cliquemates more often for positive characteristics (e.g., prosocial, cool) and high status indicators (like‐most, most‐popular) than for negative characteristics (e.g., aggression) and low status indicators (like‐least, least‐popular). At the same time, children's views toward their cliquemates were commensurate with the clique's normative reputations as determined by the broader peer group (i.e., grade). This suggests that children's perceptions toward their cliquemates, albeit favorable, are also regulated by the overall clique context. Meaningful gender and grade effects on children's cliquemate nomination patterns were found. Findings also were discussed regarding the impact of clique size on a peer‐based assessment of social reputations and status.     

‘You Feel Sad?’ Emotion Understanding Mediates Effects of Verbal Ability and Mother–Child Mutuality on Prosocial Behaviors: Findings from 2 Years to 4 Years

Early individual differences in prosocial behaviors are pivotal for children's peer relationships. To investigate the interplay among verbal ability, emotion understanding, and mother–child mutuality as predictors of prosocial behaviors, we observed 102 children at the ages of two, three, and four. All time points included verbal ability and emotion understanding tests and both video‐based and maternal ratings of prosocial behavior. The first two time points also included video‐based ratings of mother–child mutuality. The third time point included teacher ratings of prosocial behavior and an experimental task. Regression analysis demonstrated robust associations between emotion understanding at the age of three and prosocial behavior at the age of four. Path analysis showed that emotion understanding at the age of three mediated associations between verbal ability/mother–child mutuality at the age of two and prosocial behavior at the age of four.     

Preschool Children's Anticipation of Recipients' Emotions Affects Their Resource Allocation

The present study investigated the impact of preschoolers' anticipation of recipients' emotions on their resource allocation decisions. Three‐ to six‐year‐old children participated in one of three different scenarios before performing a resource allocation task. In the Other condition, children were led to think about another person's emotions when being shared with or not being shared with. In the Self condition, children were led to think about their own emotion when being shared with or not being shared with. In an epistemic control condition, children were asked to think about another person's knowledge state. The results showed that children were able to attribute different emotions to the respective recipient when being shared with or not being shared with. Children in the Other condition and the Self condition were more likely to allocate resources to the other when decisions were not associated with costs. Moreover, correlational analyses demonstrated that the more negatively children rated the emotion of the recipient when not being shared with the more they were to allocate resources to the recipient. This indicates that children's inclination to allocate resources to another person can be promoted by their awareness of a recipient's negative emotions when not being shared with.