Social Competence and Behavior Problems in Chinese Preschoolers

The factor structure and scale characteristics of the shortened version of Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE) are presented for a Chinese sample of 370 preschool children. Age and gender differences in the prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems and social competence throughout the preschool years were documented. Principal Components analyses identified three factors: social competence (SC), anger-aggression (AA) and anxiety-withdrawal (AW). There are four types of children with different developmental levels on behavior problems: AW and AA. Similar to Western samples, a step-wise progression in SC with increasing age was apparent, but there were no age trends in AA and AW, which were relatively infrequent at all ages. Boys were rated by their teachers as higher on AA and AW and lower on SC than girls.     

Assessing Social Competence and Behavior Problems in a Sample of Italian Preschoolers Using the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation Scale

Research Findings: The main goals of this study were to examine the factor validity of the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE-30) scale using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis and to test factor invariance across gender in a sample of Italian preschool-age children (241 boys, 252 girls). The concurrent validity of the SCBE scale was examined with measures of children's popularity and rejection. Our findings replicated a 3-factor model of the SCBE scale found in other studies with 3 correlated factors of social competence, anger–aggression, and anxiety–withdrawal. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence of configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance of the scale across gender. Popularity was positively related to children's social competence and negatively related to anxiety–withdrawal. Rejection was positively related to children's anger–aggression and anxiety–withdrawal and negatively related to social competence. Practice or Policy: The use of the SCBE scale in the Italian educational setting may help teachers understand children's emotional and social competencies and thereby improve social adjustment in the classroom.     

Cross-Cultural Analysis of Social Competence and Behavior Problems in Preschoolers

A multi-national study using the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation Inventory (SCBE-30) was conducted to investigate preschool children's social and emotional development across cultures. A total of 4,640 children from eight participating countries, including Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States were evaluated by their preschool teachers. The main objective of the study was to validate the SCBE-30 in each country and build a cross-cultural data set for the investigation of universals, as well as cultural differences, in the development of preschool children's social competence and the frequency and type of their behavioral problems. Results provide a clear case for the structural equivalence of the SCBE-30 across all samples, for universals in the structure of early social behavior, and possibly some differences that may be attributed to culture. The pattern of gender differences found in North American samples was found to generalize across cultural contexts as preschool boys were universally reported to be significantly more aggressive and viewed as less socially competent than girls. Age differences were also found in all eight samples reflecting increasing competence in older children, however age trends in the prevalence of behavior problems were culture specific.     

Social Competence in Nonhandicapped, Low Interacting, and Five Handicapped Groups of Preschoolers

MANOVAs and ANOVAs were used to compare nonhandicapped children; low interacting children who were not diagnosed as handicapped; and children who were mildly retarded, behaviorally disordered, developmentally delayed, orthopedically handicapped, and speech impaired on social competence measures that included behavior observations and adult and peer ratings. Following significant ANOVAs, paired comparisons were made between each group and every other group. On several of the social competence measures, nonhandicapped and speech impaired children were superior to low interacting, behaviorally disordered, and developmentally delayed children. The other handicapped groups did not differ from the nonhandicapped or from one another, except that the orthopedically handicapped children had more social interactions than the low interactors did.     

A Naturalistic Study of Affective Expression, Social Competence, and Sociometric Status in Preschoolers

Research findings. Naturalistic observation during freeplay was used to explore the role of affective expression and gender in preschoolers' social competence and sociometric status. Observers recorded occurrences of 4 types of affect: moderate and strong positive affect, anger, and distress among 56 children (M age = 50.3 months) in five classrooms. Teacher ratings of social competence and peer sociometrics were also collected. Social competence and peer acceptance were associated with strong, but not moderate positive affect. The correlates of anger and distress were moderated by the gender of the child. Girls' anger, but not distress, was negatively related to peer rejection. In contrast, boys' anger and distress were both positively related to peer rejection. Practice. These findings confirm the relations between affective expression and social competence, but also indicate that these relations may be different for boys and girls.     

A Naturalistic Study of Affective Expression,Social Competence,and Sociometric Status in Preschoolers

Research findings. Naturalistic observation during freeplay was used to explore the role of affective expression and gender in preschoolers' social competence and sociometric status. Observers recorded occurrences of 4 types of affect: moderate and strong positive affect, anger, and distress among 56 children (M age = 50.3 months) in five classrooms. Teacher ratings of social competence and peer sociometrics were also collected. Social competence and peer acceptance were associated with strong, but not moderate positive affect. The correlates of anger and distress were moderated by the gender of the child. Girls' anger, but not distress, was negatively related to peer rejection. In contrast, boys' anger and distress were both positively related to peer rejection. Practice. These findings confirm the relations between affective expression and social competence, but also indicate that these relations may be different for boys and girls.     

Social Pretend Play in Korean- and Anglo-American Preschoolers

Ninety-two preschoolers (46 Anglo- and 46 Korean-American) were observed during free play activities and videotaped in an experimental toy play setting. Cultural differences were examined in the frequency of social pretend play, communicative strategies, and pretend play themes. Anglo-American children engaged in more pretend play during free play activities than Korean-American children. In the experimental setting, there were no cultural differences in the frequency of pretend play; however, there were significant differences in children's communicative strategies and in their play themes. Korean-American children's play included everyday activity and family role themes, whereas Anglo-American children enacted danger in the environment and fantastic themes. Anglo-American children described their own actions, rejected their partners' suggestions, and used directives, whereas Korean-American children described their partners' actions and used tag questions, semantic ties, statements of agreement, and polite requests. The findings suggest that play is a common activity for most children. However, the thematic content and the communicative strategies used to structure and maintain pretend play are influenced by culture.     

适应行为研究的新理论——社会性能力理论

随着智力落后儿童教育研究的发展,适应行为的研究已经成为研究 者们关注的一个重要问题。但是,长期以来有关适应行为的研究一直存在争 论。本文将介绍美国心理学家格林斯潘的一个适应行为研究的新理论—— 社会性能力理论的内容、发展以及其的意义。以期对我国智力落后儿童的适 应行为研究有所借鉴。     

Blending Effective Behavior Management and Literacy Strategies for Preschoolers Exhibiting Negative Behavior

Sometimes students will exhibit various aggressive behaviors in the preschool classroom. Early childhood educators need to have behavior management strategies to manage the students’ negative behaviors within the classroom setting. This article will provide a rationale for embedding literacy instruction within behavior management strategies to assist preschool age students with negative behaviors. Three widely used classroom management strategies will be explained: group contingencies, anger management, and individualized behavior plans with differential reinforcement of other behaviors. Each strategy will have developmentally appropriate literacy skills infused into it. In conclusion, a suggestion will be given to early childhood educators on how to implement these blended management techniques.     

Enhancing Maternal Interactive Behavior and Child Social Competence in Low Birth Weight, Premature Infants

Effects of a comprehensive early intervention program for low birth weight, premature infants—the Infant Health and Development Program—on mother-child interaction were examined at 30 months ( N = 683). Small significant positive effects were found: Intervention mothers had higher ratings on quality of assistance; intervention children had higher ratings on persistence and enthusiasm and on an overall child rating of competence and involvement and lower ratings on percentage of time off-task; intervention dyads were rated as more synchronous. Of a set of initial status variables indexing biological and environmental risk, only 2 treatment interactions were found. Intervention group black children had higher ratings on enthusiasm and lower percentage of time off-task. Independent of treatment, maternal ethnicity and education were significant predictors of maternal and dyadic ratings, while ethnicity and birth weight predicted child ratings. Implications for early intervention and center-based care are discussed.     

Emotional Competence and Early School Adjustment: A Study of Preschoolers at Risk

This short-term longitudinal study examined whether emotion regulation and emotion understanding made unique contributions towards at-risk preschoolers' classroom adaptation. To address this question, we assessed children's emotion regulation and their understanding of emotions in both self (self-awareness, emotion coping) and in others (emotion recognition, affective perspective taking, situation knowledge). Participants were 49 children (22 boys and 27 girls) who attended a Head Start program for low-income children. Seventy percent of this sample was Caucasian, with the remainder being of Latino, African American or biracial ethnicity. Emotion regulation at the start of the school year was associated with school adjustment at year's end, whereas early emotional lability/negativity predicted poorer outcomes. Children who made a smooth adjustment to preschool also were better able to take another person's affective perspective and to identify situations that would provoke different emotional responses. Emotion regulation and understanding made unique contributions towards school adjustment, even when controlling for potential confounds, including behavior problems and verbal abilities. Teachers appeared to influence children's emotional competence by serving an important regulatory function, especially for older preschoolers at-risk.     

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.     

Parents' Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions: Relations to Children's Social Competence and Comforting Behavior

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of mothers' and fathers' reported emotion-related practices to parents' and teachers' reports of third-to sixth-grade children's social skills, popularity, and coping, as well as the quantity and quality of children's comforting of an infant. Mothers' problem-focused reactions tended to be positively associated with children's social functioning and coping, whereas maternal minimizing reactions tended to be linked to lower levels of social competence and high levels of avoidant coping. There were few findings for fathers' reactions, although fathers reported fewer problem-focused reactions with socially competent, in contrast to less competent, daughters. Emotion-focused and problem-focused maternal reactions, as well as encouragement of the expression of emotion, were associated with boys' children's comforting behavior, although a moderate level of maternal encouragement of the expression of emotion was associated with quality of girls' comforting.     

Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE-30) and Socialization Values (SVQ): Russian Children Ages 3 to 6 Years

The social competence and problem behaviors of 217 Russian preschoolers were evaluated by their teachers using the SCBE-30, and socialization values were rated by 26 teachers using a 25-item Socialization Values Q-Sort. It was demonstrated that the development of social competence and behavior problems in Russian preschoolers has many similarities with American, Canadian, French and Spanish samples (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996; Dumas & Laughlin, 2000). Structural equivalence was demonstrated by finding the same three factors of anxiety-withdrawal, anger-aggression, and social competence as in other samples, and significant negative correlations were observed between social competence and anxiety-withdrawal, and social competence and anger-aggression. These similarities may reflect the universal nature of human social behavior and existence of panhuman characteristics that equip children for survival (Whiting & Edwards, 1988; Butovskaya et al., 2000). At the same time, social competence, angeraggression and anxious-withdrawn scales revealed a mix of universal and culturally specific patterns that may be connected with gender stereotypes that prevail in Russian culture (Butovskaya et al., 1998). Socialization values of the teachers were generally collectivistic, and we believe that this fact influences to some extent their ratings of children on SCBE scales.     

Preschoolers at risk: Social,emotional and cognitive considerations

This report examines the IQs of 75 preschool children perceived to be “at risk” by parents, nursery school teachers, and diagnostic nursery staff. Full Scale, verbal and Performance IQs of the WPPSI were correlated with: (a) assessment of problem area (b) socioeconomic and familial variables (c) gross assessments of speech and motor development and (d) attendance, participation and improvement in a special preschool program. Significant correlations were obtained between IQ and: (a) socioeconomic and familial variables, and (b) perceived improvement. The findings emphasize that social, emotional and cognitive factors are interrelated components in the child's global development.     

Comparing Results from the Clinical Assessment of Behavior and Child Behavior Checklist with Referred Preschoolers

Behavior rating scales are popular assessment tools but more research is needed on the preschool versions of the instruments, particularly with referred samples of preschoolers. This study examined the comparability of results from parent ratings on the preschool versions of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL/1.5‐5, Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000) and the Clinical Assessment of Behavior‐Parent form (CAB‐P, Bracken & Keith, 2004) with 74 clinically referred preschoolers. While pairs of similarly named scales from the two instruments received significant correlations, mean scores from the CBCL/1.5‐5 were significantly higher than those from the CAB‐P. Classification consistency was a concern as well. School psychologists are urged to be cautious in their interpretation of results from preschool behavior rating scales.     

Multicultural and Social Justice Competence in Clinical Supervision

The authors apply the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (Ratts, Singh, Nassar‐McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015) model to clinical supervision, highlighting ways for supervisors to intentionally integrate multicultural and social justice practices into the supervision enterprise. They offer specific implications for supervision practice, including a focus on broaching strategies.     

A Review of Interventions for Preschoolers with Aggressive and Disruptive Behavior

The uneven availability of child-care centers for different kinds of families has been detailed in recent years. Much less is known about the distribution of center quality across communities. Nor do we understand the role that local contexts or state policies may play in shaping quality levels. This paper describes several quality indicators, based on reports of 170 center directors situated in three California counties. We found that most centers in lower-income and working-class communities displayed at least moderate levels of quality along structural measures, such as class size, the ratio of children per staff member, and staff education levels. About one in six failed to meet recommended quality standards. Some quality indicators were lower for centers located in communities with lower supply of center enrollment slots per capita, possibly due to excess family demand for center-based care. Center quality was not consistently influenced by community conditions such as poverty levels, ethnic composition, or maternal employment rates. Quality was higher among centers receiving stronger flows of public subsidies. We discuss the success of state agencies in advancing quality among centers and remaining policy challenges.