Stable Peer Research Articles

Emotional and Behavioral Predictors of Preschool Peer Ratings

It was predicted that social cognitive, behavioral, and affective aspects of young children's social development would predict stable peer ratings of their likability. Measures of likability, emotion knowledge, prosocial and aggressive behavior, peer competence, and expressed emotions (happy and angry) were obtained for 65 subjects (mean age = 44 months). Sociometric ratings, particularly negative, were stable over 1- and 9-month time periods. Correlational analyses showed that emotion knowledge and prosocial behavior were direct predictors of likability. Prosocial behavior mediated the relations of gender and expressed emotions with likability (i.e., gender and expressed emotions were each related to prosocial behavior, and prosocial behavior was related to likability, but neither gender nor expressed emotions were related to likability with prosocial behavior partialled out). Knowledge of emotional situations similarly mediated the age-likability relation. Results uphold the early development of stable peer reputations and the hypothesized centrality of emotion-related predictors of likability.

Adolescent crisis. Challenge for patient, parent, and internist.

The physiological crisis of puberty and adolescence, historically attenuated by environmental supports, is now reinforced by societal changes. A major pressure on adolescents is the loss of the extended family, with its consequent social isolation, especially produced by social mobility. Psychological maturation is difficult if adolescents do not have meaningful emotional attachments to adults who are not their parents, as well as to a stable peer group. Educational and care delivery systems could help. Particular problems have been created for the present generation of teenagers by changes in child rearing practices, the confusion of roles among parents, and the passivity induced by television watching. Problems in the school system are reinforced by an abrupt mix of social class and ethnic groups. The implication of adolescent stress in physical illness and its treatment, as well as the effect of syndromes such as epilepsy and diabetes on maturation, are reviewed.

Incentive value of social stimuli for preschool children.

The role of the social stimulus as a variable determining human behavior has been given a significant place in general theorizing about learning and personality development. However, carefully controlled research is not extensive: a standard definition of a social stimulus is not in use. Some recent studies (I, 2, 7) using children as subjects defined a social stimulus in terms of the presence or absence of an adult in the experimental situation. The results of these studies suggest that the variable defined in this manner affects learning behavior. Social stimuli for children can also be defined in terms of peers. Within the context of a preschool setting it has been demonstrated that stable peer relationships are formed (4, 5, 6). If preschool peers are relevant social stimuli, the way in which these stimuli affect behavior suggests an interesting area of research.

Evaluation of emotional disturbance in 403 Israeli Kibbutz children.

The Kibbutz has produced a method of upbringing planned to fit its interests, needs and goals. The most significant differences between the Kibbutz system of education and the traditional Western family can be set down under three headings : the transfer of several parental functions to other adult figures; the importance of the peer group for the Kibbutz children; and the similarity of roles assumed by father and mother in the child-parent relationship. The child is raised in a rather stable peer group whose importance for the child steadily increases from the second year of life on. The process of socialization is mainly achieved through this very early and constant group interaction, with the nurse assuming the role of socializer. The father in the Kibbutz usually spends more time with his children than in the traditional Western family. Beginning with the second year of life the father is with his children for the same period of time as the mother using this time in most of the cases to be a playmate. The usual sex distinction between the role of provider and caretaker does not exist in the Kibbutz. Despite these striking qualitative differences in their upbringing, the Kibbutz children seem to fit into the normal range of behavior pattern. A study was designed to explore the frequency and intensity of a wide range of behavior problems within the total population of 403 children aged 1 to 12 years in three different Kibbutzim. No evidence was found of unusual percentage of behavior problems attributable to emotional deprivation. With regard to frequency and intensity of most of the symptoms the findings seem either to match the usual figures in "normal controls" or even appeared less prominently. This was observed in relation to symptoms like aggression, temper tantrum, breathholding attacks, enuresis, rhythmic motor habits, speech problems, nailbiting, and night fears. A very peculiar difference is the inverted ratio between thumbsucking and eating problems. Kibbutz children at different age levels had 3 times more thumbsucking and about 3 times less eating problems than "normal control groups." No significant differences were found with regard to additional behavior problems between 108 thumbsuckers and 225 Kibbutz children who did not present the symptom. The apparent explanation for the high incidence of thumbsucking, in addition to the early weaning of the Kibbutz infants, seems to be the very permissive approach to the symptom. The low frequency of eating problems and psychogenic vomiting reflects most likely the fact that the feeding functions and training is in charge of the nurse instead of the mother from the end of the first year of life. In the Kibbutz, as in the traditional family, the parents constitute the most important figure in the child's life. Deviational behavior of Kibbutz children–with exclusion of constitutional factors–is due in the great majority of cases to a disturbed child-parent relationship. Rich opportunities for research in normal child development are provided by the kibbutz system of education, and as Bowlby (1) has stressed..."it is to be hoped these will not be missed."

Investigation of Areas of Disagreement in Sociometric Measurement of Preschool Children

Sociometric research has been concerned primarily with groups of school-age children. Yet no secondary group is more important to the development of a child's ways of interacting and, perhaps, his self-concept, than the earliest stable peer group, the nursery school. Among the relatively few sociometric studies of preschool children there has been great disparity both in method and results. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate areas of disagreement and omission by means of an adapted sociometric method which incorporates both choice and rejection into a single index of status. Disagreements have arisen in every phase of sociometric research, among them the question of validation. In relation to the present investigation, an important point has been whether or not nursery school children have or can express preferences among their peers. The fact that subjects do respond has been adequate evidence for many investigators. Jennings (6) and Pepinsky (17) point out that sociometric choices, being direct measures of preferences, differ from many standardized tests, which are indirect measures of psychological processes, and thus require no validation against outside criteria. Other investigators, such as Hagman (5), Frankel (4), Moreno (11), and Emerson (3), have attempted a measure of validity by comparing verbal choices with observed contacts. Only Emerson, who used the adapted sociometric method employed in the present study, found a high degree of agreement between these variables. Both Hagman and Frankel found low correlations, but they came to differing conclusions: Hagman questioned the validity of sociometric testing on the preschool level; Frankel, on the other hand, believed that the two measures reflected two aspects of, rather than the identical, social phenomenon, pointing out that some children who had been chosen verbally were inaccessible on the playground. The same point of view was expressed by Emerson, who noted that contacts involved any observed interactions among children, including those not desired as well as those sought. Similar reasoning may explain the differences in results reported when teacher ratings of children's status were compared with the subjects' verbal choices. Koch (8) found a high positive correlation, while Lippitt (io), using the same methods, found a low degree of agreement.

Behavioral differences of sociometric status groups in a nursery school.

The purpose of this study was to investigate certain behavioral differences between those children who were most chosen and those who were most rejected by their peers in a nursery school group. The research was designed to provide quantitative measures of the behavioral and sociometric variables in order that the method might be applicable to other groups for replication and extension of the area of investigation. It has been found by other researchers that young children do have preferences among their peers (4, 5, 9, I1), and both the present study and the Budden study reported by Northway (11) found that these preferences show a high rank order consistency over a period of months. There has been little agreement, however, about the characteristics of children who achieve high or low status in this earliest stable peer group experience. Most of the studies, including those of school age children, have investigated the relationship of sociometric status to background factors, such as propinquity, age, and family data (2, 4, 6), or to personality variables such as intelligence, behavior within the group, and motor abilities (4, 5, 7, 8, 9). The behavior variables have been measured primarily through observation of a group in a nonstandardized setting, with the exception of Moreno (9), who observed interaction between experimental pairs. No reports were found in which individual performance measured in a controlled experimental situation was the dependent variable. In order to meet the need both for method and information the present study was undertaken, utilizing a set of play materials for the experimental medium.