Pre-school peer play: The beginnings of social competence

Abstract

Background:Successful school experience is influenced by children’s ability to manage their emotions and relationships with others. Peer play provides an important learning context for the early development of social competence, but not enough is known about the emergence of peer relationships in the pre-school years. Our study explores peer play in 2- to 3-year-olds, identifying the roles played by temperament and emotion understanding, and examining convergence between parent and practitioner assessments of social behaviour.Methods:106 children aged 2 to 3 years yielded data from three questionnaires: the Goodman (Goodman & Scott, 1999) Strengths and Difficulties questionnaire, rated by parents and practitioners; the Rothbart et al.’s (2001) Child Behaviour Questionnaire measure of temperament, rated by parents; and the Fantuzzo et al.’s (1995) Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale, rated by practitioners. A subsample of 28 children completed emotion recognition and prediction tasks adapted from Denham (1986).Results:Parent ratings of children’s temperament – particularly effortful control/self-regulation and surgency/extraversion – predicted practitioner ratings of socio-behavioural and peer play competencies. Also, emotion understanding predicted interactive peer play competencies and pro-social behaviour. There was agreement between parent and practitioner ratings of pro-social behaviour, but there was evidence of divergence in judgements about behaviour problems.Discussion:The findings show the importance of exploring play situations as a context for understanding the emergence of peer relationships and social competence in the pre-school years. They also highlight the links between parental judgements and practitioner perceptions of young children’s interactions. Implications for our understanding and promotion of children’s social competence are discussed, with attention to possible impacts on learning.