Are Socially Anxious Children Poor or Advanced Mindreaders?

Why are some children more socially anxious than others? One theory holds that socially anxious children are poor mindreaders, which hampers their social interactions; another that socially anxious children are advanced mindreaders leading to heightened self-consciousness in social situations. To test these theories simultaneously, this study (N = 105, ages 8–12) assessed children's mindreading (accuracy in detecting mental states from the eye region), self-consciousness (indexed as physiological blushing during public performance), and social anxiety levels. Results support both theories, showing a quadratic relation between mindreading and social anxiety. Low mindreading was related to clinical levels of social anxiety. High mindreading was related to subclinical levels of social anxiety through blushing. Our findings suggest two social-cognitive pathways to heightened social anxiety.     

Social integration of deaf children in inclusive settings

This article examines social integration of deaf children in inclusive settings in The Netherlands. Eighteen Grade 1-5 deaf children and their 344 hearing classmates completed 2 sociometric tasks, peer ratings and peer nomination, to measure peer acceptance, social competence, and friendship relations. Deaf and hearing children were found to be similar in their peer acceptance and friendship relations, but differences occurred in social competence. Deaf children scored lower than hearing children on prosocial behavior and higher on socially withdrawn behavior. Structural equation modeling showed peer acceptance, social competence, and friendship relations to be stable over time, and the structure of interrelations between variables at 2 measurements were found to be the same for deaf and hearing participants.     

The Relation between Chinese Preschoolers’ Social-Emotional Competence and Preacademic Skills

Research Findings: The current study examines the relations between Chinese preschoolers’ social-emotional competence and their preacademic skills, as well as the role of child gender and parental education in such relations. A total of 154 children from the northeastern region of China were involved in the study. Both parents and head teachers of the target children completed measures of children’s social-emotional competence and preacademic skills. Multiple aspects of social-emotional competence were investigated. The results showed that children’s withdrawn behaviors and attention problems were negatively related to their preacademic skills. Both parent- and teacher-reported positive social behaviors were positively related to children’s preacademic skills. In addition, child gender and parental education together moderated the effects of children’s anxious/depressed problems and parent-reported social behaviors on children’s preacademic skills. Practice or Policy: Teacher training and support are needed to help preschool teachers (a) better support children who are socially withdrawn or have difficulty regulating attention and (b) understand the construct and importance of social-emotional development in relation to children’s preacademic development . In addition, child characteristics such as age and gender and socioeconomic factors need to be taken into consideration in the study of young children’s social-emotional and cognitive competence.     

Preschool Antecedents of Internalizing Problems in Children Beginning School: The Role of Social Maladaptation

The quality of children's social adaptation in preschool was related to levels of internalizing problem behavior following transition to kindergarten. Measures of peer acceptance, social skills, and social problem-solving ability were assessed in 79 4-5 year old children, and related to teacher's ratings of anxious/withdrawn behavior assessed concurrently and one year later. Boys and girls did not differ in mean levels of symptoms, but girls tended to show higher levels of stability in internalizing problem behavior than boys. As predicted, preschool-age children with relatively high rates of internalizing problem behavior tended to manifest lower levels of social competence than others. Moreover, low levels of social competence in preschool were robust predictors of persistently high levels of internalizing problems across the two time periods.     

Preschool Antecedents of Internalizing Problems in Children Beginning School: The Role of Social Maladaptation

The quality of children's social adaptation in preschool was related to levels of internalizing problem behavior following transition to kindergarten. Measures of peer acceptance, social skills, and social problem-solving ability were assessed in 79 4–5 year old children, and related to teacher's ratings of anxious/withdrawn behavior assessed concurrently and one year later. Boys and girls did not differ in mean levels of symptoms, but girls tended to show higher levels of stability in internalizing problem behavior than boys. As predicted, preschool-age children with relatively high rates of internalizing problem behavior tended to manifest lower levels of social competence than others. Moreover, low levels of social competence in preschool were robust predictors of persistently high levels of internalizing problems across the two time periods.     

Young Children's Trust Beliefs in Peers: Relations to Social Competence and Interactive Behaviors in a Peer Group

Research Findings: The aim of this study was to explore the relations between children's trust beliefs and social competence as well as social preference. In addition, this study examined how children with different trust belief profiles may differ in their peer interactive behaviors. A total of 47 children ages 5 to 6 participated in this study. Data were collected via observation of play behaviors, a teacher-rated social competence scale, and a child interview. The results indicated that children's trust beliefs in friends’ promise-keeping behaviors were positively associated with intrapersonal and interpersonal domains of social competence. Children who had greater trust in non-friend classmates’ promise-keeping behaviors tended to be sociable in a group, polite, and more preferred, and they were less likely to be disliked by peers. Children with different trust profiles exhibited differential interactive behaviors with peers. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest that parents and early childhood educators should pay more attention to the extent to which young children trust their close friends and familiar peers, especially in terms of keeping promises. Adults may model their efforts in keeping their promises made to children and enhance children's capacity to reciprocate trust in close relationships. Adults can help children differentiate their trust based on the intimacy of relationships.     

Racial Prejudice,Interracial Contact,and Personality Variables

This study examined the relationship of the racial prejudice of school-age children to the actual race of the child, interracial contact, grade, sex, intelligence, locus of control, anxiety, and self-concept. A scale was devised to measure five facets of racial prejudice: a total index of racial prejudice, dating and marriage, school, social relationships, and racial interactions in restaurants. The subjects were 93 black children and 307 white children in grades 6 through 10. The results indicated that white students appear to be more prejudiced than blacks in situations requiring prolonged interracial contact; however, no differences were noted in circumstances involving minimal intimate social relationships for short periods of time. No differences in prejudice were found among grade levels; however, females were generally less prejudiced than males. Black males of low prejudice were more intelligent, more external, and less anxious than black males of higher prejudice. It is suggested that integration in schools be gradual, and that personality factors, not external circumstances, may make major contributions to the development of prejudice.     

Relations of Preschoolers' Social Acceptance to Peer Ratings and Self-Perceptions

To examine the relations of preschoolers' social acceptance to peer ratings and self-perceptions, 53 preschoolers were asked to rate how much they liked or disliked their peers and to justify these ratings. Preschoolers also rated their peers' aggressive, prosocial, and sociable behavior. Finally, they completed a pictorial self-perception scale that assessed their views of their physical competence and their relationships with mother and with peers. Children who were better liked by peers were rated as more prosocial, more sociable, and less aggressive than less liked children. Preschoolers often reported liking certain peers because they perceived that those peers liked them; they often reported disliking certain peers because they perceived those peers as aggressive. In contrast to findings with older children, preschoolers' social acceptance was not significantly related to any aspect of their self-perceptions. The results provide evidence for the validity of peer ratings by preschool-age children and bring up issues related to the development and assessment of self-perceptions among preschoolers.     

Relations of Preschoolers' Social Acceptance to Peer Ratings and Self-Perceptions

To examine the relations of preschoolers' social acceptance to peer ratings and self-perceptions, 53 preschoolers were asked to rate how much they liked or disliked their peers and to justify these ratings. Preschoolers also rated their peers' aggressive, prosocial, and sociable behavior. Finally, they completed a pictorial self-perception scale that assessed their views of their physical competence and their relationships with mother and with peers. Children who were better liked by peers were rated as more prosocial, more sociable, and less aggressive than less liked children. Preschoolers often reported liking certain peers because they perceived that those peers liked them; they often reported disliking certain peers because they perceived those peers as aggressive. In contrast to findings with older children, preschoolers' social acceptance was not significantly related to any aspect of their self-perceptions. The results provide evidence for the validity of peer ratings by preschool-age children and bring up issues related to the development and assessment of self-perceptions among preschoolers.     

The persistence of social attraction in socially deprived and satiated rats

Pairs of socially deprived or satiated rats were observed for 71÷2 continuous hours in an open field. Social contact increased monotonically throughout this time, with socially deprived animals showing more attraction, and a greater increase in attraction, than satiated animals. The quality of social contact changed, however, from a predominantly active interaction, in which the most sociable animals were most mobile, to a predominantly passive huddling, in which the most sociable animals were least mobile. The results suggest that social attraction in rats is not transitory, and may serve several different functions.     

Subtypes of Social Withdrawal in Early Childhood: Sociometric Status and Social-Cognitive Differences across Four Years

From a sample of 567 kindergartners observed during free play, 150 children were classified as socially withdrawn and followed over 4 years. A cluster analysis involving teacher ratings was used to identify subtypes of withdrawn children. Four clusters were identified, 3 fitting profiles found in the literature and labeled unsociable (n=96), passive-anxious (n=23), and active-isolate (n=19), and I typically not discussed, labeled sad/depressed (n=12). Sociometric ratings indicated that unsociable children had elevated rates of sociometric neglect, active-isolates had higher than expected levels of rejection, and sad/depressed children had elevated rates of both neglect and rejection. Subtypes also differed in social information-processing patterns, with active-isolate children displaying the least competent skills. The findings that some subtypes experience more difficulty than others might account for the ambiguity in extant studies regarding whether or not social withdrawal is a risk factor in psychosocial development, because withdrawal has most often been treated as a unitary construct in the past     

Behavioral, Affective, and Social Correlates of Involvement in Cross-Sex Friendship in Elementary School

The purpose of this study was to compare children with and without cross-sex friends on measures of social and cognitive competence, endorsement of sex-role stereotypes, and family composition. Subjects were 723 third and fourth graders (377 girls, 346 boys) from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds; 35% were African American. Measures included sociometric assessments of peer acceptance, friendship, and behavioral reputation, as well as self-reports of perceived self-competence and endorsement of sex-role stereotypes. In addition, teachers completed ratings of children's social and cognitive competence. In all, 92 children, about 14% of the sample, had one or more reciprocal opposite-sex friends; for 21 of these children, their cross-sex friendships were their primary or only friendships. African American children were more likely than European American children to have opposite-sex friends. Involvement in cross-sex friendships was unrelated to the gender make-up of the classroom, but was related to family structure. Comparisons of the children who had primarily or only cross-sex friends to matched groups of children who had only same-sex friends and to children who had cross-sex friends secondarily to same-sex ones revealed a number of differences between the groups in social competence and relationships with peers. Overall, children with primarily opposite-sex friends had poorer social skills than other children with friends, although they were less stereotyped about sex roles than other children, and were better adjusted than children with no friends on most measures. In contrast, children involved in opposite-sex friendship secondarily to same-sex friendship were as well adjusted socially as children with only same-sex friendships. These results suggest that children with cross-sex friends differ among themselves, depending on the primacy of the cross-sex relationship.     

Vulnerability and Resilience: A Study of High-Risk Adolescents

Factors that allow children to maintain socially competent behaviors despite stress were examined among 144 inner-city ninth-grade students with a mean age of 15.3 years. Stress was operationalized by scores on a negative life events scale, and definitions of social competence were based on peer ratings, teacher ratings, and school grades. Moderator variables examined included intelligence, internal locus of control, social skills, ego development, and positive life events. Following theoretical models by Garmezy and Rutter, distinctions were made between compensatory factors (which are directly related to competence) and protective/vulnerability factors (which interact with stress in influencing competence). Ego development was found to be compensatory against stress. Internality and social skills proved to be protective factors, while intelligence and positive events were involved in vulnerability processes. This study also revealed that children labeled as resilient were significantly more depressed and anxious than were competent children from low stress backgrounds.     

Temperamental Shyness,Frontal EEG Theta/Beta Ratio,and Social Anxiety in Children

The authors examined how children’s frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) theta/beta ratio—an index of neurocognitive control—changed from baseline to a social stressor, and whether these EEG changes moderated the relation between temperament and anxiety. Children (N = 152; M_age = 7.82 years, 52% male, 81% White) had their EEG recorded during a baseline and speech anticipation condition. Children’s frontal theta/beta ratio decreased from baseline to speech anticipation, and this baseline-to-task change moderated the relation between temperamental shyness and social anxiety. Temperamental shyness was related to higher state and trait social anxiety only among children with large baseline-to-task decreases in theta/beta ratio. Findings are consistent with theoretical models hypothesizing that temperamentally shy children with heightened neurocognitive control may be at greater risk for anxiety.     

The activity context of preschool children's social interactions: A comparison of high and low social interactors

The purpose of this observational study of the activity context in which preschool children engaged in positive social interactions was to produce a data source that could be used to assist in the identification of socially withdrawn children, and to select efficient training contexts in which to develop the social behavior repertoire of withdrawn youngsters. Eleven high-rate and 10 low-rate social interactors, ranging in age from 36 to 72 months, were observed for 12 10-minute sessions across a 3-month period. Six activity contexts were coded by trained observers: Observer, Isolate, Parallel, Game, Cooperative, and Fantasy. The results indicated that: (a) Low-rate children engaged in significantly more Isolate and Observer activity than did high-rate children. (b) High-rate children engaged in significantly more Cooperative and Fantasy activity than did low-rate children. (c) There were no significant differences between groups for Game and Parallel activities. Results are discussed in terms of the concurrent validity between frequency of interaction measures and the activity context data, the developmental progression of social skills acquisition, and the selection of treatment contexts for withdrawn children.     

Emotion Regulation, Parenting and Display of Social Reticence in Preschoolers

The study of social reticence in early childhood has focused primarily on those dispositional, intra-individual factors that might account for its demonstration among peers. Little is known, however, about the relations between social reticence and its association with the quality of parenting behaviors. Indeed, the independent and interactive “contributions” of dispositional and parenting factors to children's demonstration of socially reticent behavior have not received adequate attention. In this study, 188 preschool children and their mothers were observed during unstructured Free-play and a structured Lego-building teaching task. Additionally, the children were observed in quartets of same-sex, same-age unfamiliar peers. Results indicated that children's shy, socially reticent behavior was predicted by the extent to which mothers were over-solicitous during Free-play. In addition, preschooler's expressions of reticent behavior were predicted by the interactions between emotion dysregulation and the lack of maternal guidance and control during a teaching task. Emotionally dysregulated children whose mothers provided little control in this putatively stressful teaching task were more likely to be shy and reticent. This relation was non-significant for dysregulated children with mothers who provided high levels of guidance. The results suggest that early childhood educators offer reticent/shy children opportunities to explore their impersonal and social milieus and to warmly encourage such exploratory activities. Without such encouragement and opportunity building, reticent preschoolers may suffer from not having experienced sufficient exploration-to-play sequences thereby stifling the problem-solving competencies derived from such experiences.     

Psychosocial adjustment in adolescent child molesters

This study compared adolescent child molesters (n = 31) with nonsex offending delinquents (n = 34) and normal adolescents (n = 71) on standardized measures of social competence and psychological adjustment. The measures included the Adolescent Assertiveness Scale, the Survey of Heterosocial Interactions, the Self-Consciousness Scale, the Social Anxiety and Distress Scale, the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Norwicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale, and the Jesness Inventory. Results were consistent with predictions. Molesters showed significantly more global maladjustment than normals and were more socially anxious and threatened by heterosocial interactions than nonsex offending delinquents. A discriminant function analysis suggested that molesters, more than delinquents, were likely to perceive themselves as socially inadequate and to be externally oriented in their attributional style. Results support the hypothesis that social skill deficits and social isolation are risk factors that may predispose some adolescents to commit sexual crimes against children.     

The interplay of social competence and psychopathology over 20 years: testing transactional and cascade models

Associations among internalizing, externalizing, and social competence were examined in a longitudinal cohort (N = 205) of 8- to 12-year-old children reassessed after 7, 10, and 20 years. Theoretically informed nested structural equation models tested interconnections among broad multi-informant constructs across four developmental periods. Follow-up analyses examined gender invariance, measurement and age effects, and putative common causes. Key model comparisons indicated robust negative paths from social competence to internalizing problems from childhood to adolescence and from emerging adulthood to young adulthood. Social competence and externalizing problems showed strong initial associations in childhood but no longitudinal cross-domain paths. Using a developmental psychopathology framework, results are discussed in relation to cascade and transactional effects and the interplay between competence and symptoms over time.     

Social interaction development among behaviorally handicapped preschool children: Research and educational implications

Literature is reviewed that documents the effectiveness of a behavioral approach for increasing the social behaviors of behaviorally handicapped preschool children. However, this literature also suggests that reciprocal interaction between target subjects and significant others seldom generalized beyond treatment settings. The importance of developing positive, reciprocal interaction has been well documented. The results of observational studies suggest that with respect to both quantity and quality of interaction, the child creates his own social environment. For example, the passive, withdrawn child is the more frequent recipient of social rejection than is the more socially active child; the physically aggressive child receives more hostile social bids from peers than less aggressive youngsters; and, of course, the child who initiates positive interaction with peers tends to receive more positive social attention than less socially adept youngsters. Thus, children's behavior patterns tend to set the occasion for that kind of social approach by peers that validates, in a sense, their own approach to peers. If affective education for young handicapped children is to become a reality, additional research is necessary to identify those response patterns that set the occasion for positive reciprocal interaction.     

Social and Emotional Competencies: Contributions to Young African-American Children's Peer Acceptance

This study explored the relation between measures of emotional competence, behavioral regulation, and general social competence and African-American preschoolers' peer acceptance and popularity. These children came from both lower and middle income families. Data were collected in a short-term longitudinal study following children over the course of a school year. Gender, emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and themes of violence in response to hypothetical situations of interpersonal conflict were strongly related to peer acceptance. The results are consistent with findings from middle-class Caucasian samples. The results also highlight the importance of potential influences of context and setting on children's peer status as well as the need for greater understanding of within- group variability with regard to these constructs. Given the growing evidence that peer relationships are related in important ways to children's school adjustment, understanding the development of positive peer relationships may help shed light on ways to help children achieve at more optimal levels in the school context.