Investigating the relationship between social behaviors and phonological awareness in preschool children

Purpose

This study examined the longitudinal effects of social behaviors in predicting phonological awareness outcomes in 4-year-old children.

Method

One hundred two children (52 boys, 50 girls) were recruited from 11 schools serving low-income neighborhoods in a large metropolitan city and were assessed at the beginning and end of the preschool year. All children received assessments of their phonological awareness skills, expressive vocabulary, non-verbal IQ, and teachers completed behavioral ratings at pretest. At the end of the academic year, children participated in tests of phonological awareness using standardized assessments.

Results

The results of a multiple regression analysis indicated that being excluded by peers contributed up to 3% of the variance in negatively predicting phonological awareness outcomes after controlling for initial phonological awareness skills, expressive vocabulary, and cognition which is a small effect size.

Conclusion

Early peer exclusion can impact negatively on the acquisition of phonological awareness skills in 4-year-old children in preschool. The results of this study suggest that a child's overall behavioral competence and how they are treated by the peer group may play an important role in their ease of academic skill attainment. Given the link between peer exclusion and difficulties with phonological awareness outcomes, additional professional development programs that provide teachers with strategies to create inclusive classrooms may be warranted in preventing against the emergence of maladaptive behaviors at first entry into formal schooling.     

The relationship between rational thinking and intelligence in children

This study ws designed to evaluate the efficacy of a four-session REE curriculum and examine the relationship between intelligence and the endorsement of irrational beliefs in elementary school children. A twotailedt-test administered to examine difference between pre- and post-test scores onThe Idea Inventory was statistically significant,t (1,94)=5.90,p<.0001. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient between pre-test scores onThe Idea Inventory and theOtis-Lennon School Ability Test failed to reach significance (r=.15) suggesting higher intelligence did not predict greater endorsement of rational beliefs. The post-test scores using the same two instruments reached a correlation coefficient of r=.51 and was statistically significant at the .01 level. A higher percentage of children who scored below the mean on theOtis-Lennon improved from pre- to post-test than children who scored above the mean.     

The relationship of sex role identity and social and politicalattitudes

A study is reported of the relationship between conscious social role preferences, unconscious sexual identifications, and attitudes toward five categories of social and political issues. Based on factor scores of inventory items, the categories include political liberalism, birth control, sex role morality, racial discrimination, and the achievement ethic The population studied consisted of men and women from communities designated working class, middle class, and upper class Controlling for the effects of age, sex, marital status, occupation, education, and political party preference, results indicate statistically significant associations between conscious and unconscious masculinity and femininity and attitudes toward all five categories of issues The patterns of associations, however, are not always consistent Discussion includes a consideration of sex role identity as a value and the implication of sex role differentiation for the integration of personality as well as social institutions     

Classification of spelling errors and their relationship to reading ability, sex, grade placement, and intelligence

A simple scheme for the classification of spelling errors was applied to the errors of four groups of children, totaling 483 subjects, in grades 3 to 12. The subjects in two of the groups, Group I and Group IV, consisted of individuals who attended special schools for children with dyslexia or specific reading disability (SRD). Group II included school age siblings of subjects in Group I, and Group III included subjects drawn from regular school programs. It was shown that (a) type of spelling error is independent of sex, (b) there are no consistent effects of IQ or grade level on type of spelling error, and (c) disabled readers as a group are more likely to produce dysphonetic errors than are normal readers. Although the type of spelling error produced by children who had a spelling disability only was shown to be similar to that of normal readers and to differ from that of disabled readers as a group, disabled readers were shown to differ among themselves, lending strong support to the use of spelling error type as a characteristic for identifying subgroups.     

The influence of relationship status, mate seeking, and sex on intrasexual competition

Researchers have little explored individuals' perceptions of same-sex attractiveness in terms of the influence of relationship status. By using intrasexual competition as a conceptual framework, the authors predicted that romantically involved individuals would protect their relationship by derogating competitors. Although previous researchers have strongly predicted this result, in the present study the relationship status had a negligible impact on competition, for which relationship commitment, sociosexual orientation, and self-monitoring did not account. Also, among uninvolved individuals, the authors expected those individuals seeking mates would use competitor derogation more than would those individuals not seeking mates, but there was no significant difference. Finally, because the vehicle for this investigation was attractiveness, an area in which women compete, the authors proposed that women would derogate more fiercely than would men. However, the results did not support this hypothesis either. The authors discuss future directions for research.     

The relationship between intelligence and vigilance in children at risk

The purpose of this study was to compare two competing models as an explanation of the relationship between intelligence and sustained attention in educationally at-risk kindergarten children. One model assumes that lower-IQ subjects allocate greater amounts of attentional resources to information-processing tasks than higher-IQ subjects, whereas the other model assumes that a less-than optimal level of arousal is associated with decrements in task performance across time. Twenty-nine teacher-nominated at-risk and 29 normal achieving kindergarten students were administered the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence—Revised (WPPSI-R) and vigilance tasks. Signal detection measures of stimulus detectability (d), decision criterion (), correct detections, and false alarms were used to assess children's sustained attention across three time periods (2, 4, and 6 min). The important results were (a) high-risk children were inferior on dmeasures when compared to normal achieving children, (b) vigilance measures did not vary over time in either group, and (c) intelligence and vigilance shared a common factor in high-risk, but not low-risk, children. The results suggest that children educationally at risk suffer deficits related to attentional capacity for processing information. Special appreciation is expressed to Ron Jarman for his comments on the statistical analysis and the Courtenay School District, British Columbia, Canada, for providing participants. The authors also thank two anonymous reviewers who provided comments on an earlier version of this article.     

The relationship between social status and the components of agency

Building on the two fundamental dimensions of social judgment distinguishing communion from agency, the purpose of the present work was to show that the strength of the relationship between social status and agency depends on specific components at issue: assertiveness, competence, and effort. Four experimental studies were conducted using two complementary paradigms. In Studies 1 and 2, we manipulated social status, and participants had to rate the target on competence, assertiveness, and effort. In Studies 3 and 4, we reversed the design. Results consistently showed that social status was primarily related to assertiveness, somewhat related to competence, and only slightly related to effort. The present research provides a better understanding of how the dimensions of social judgment are used to explain differences in social status.     

The relationship between assertion and sociometric status of children

A correlational study was conducted in an effort to examine the relationship between children's level of assertive skill and their social (sociometric) status. The Ss were 15 male and 15 female elementary school children ranging in age from 9 to 11 yr. Each S was administered: (a) positive and negative peer nominations and roster and rating scale sociometrics; (b) self-report questionnaires concerning their assertive behavior; and (c) standardized interviews to assess knowledge of assertive behavior. In addition, teachers' ratings of children's interpersonal behavior were obtained. Results indicated some degree of correspondence between assertion indices and sociometric ratings. However, correlation coefficients generally were in the low-to-moderate range. Also, several scales from children's self-report and teacher's ratings of children's assertive behavior differentiated high- and low-popular children. Results are discussed in terms of: (1) the utility of employing multiple criteria in assessing social functioning of children; and (2) the need to determine empirically the relevance of assertive and other interpersonal skills in childrens' social repertoires.     

Work conditions, social status and sex differences in primary and secondary enuresis

From previous investigations on the enuresis problem a distinction between primary and secondary enuresis is established. The first type concerns children who have never been dry and the second those with acquired enuresis. The theory is advanced that primary enuresis is a development problem mainly due to delayed cortical development or insufficient bladder capacity, whereas secondary enuresis is regarded as caused by an increased anxiety level. Some social and psychological factors in this theory, i.e., the mother's working conditions, the social status of the family, and the sex of the child, are empirically examined in an investigation of 82 children 7–15 years old. The results support the view that the main factors in the enuresis problem are related to the child's daily practice and in the socialization form of the family.     

An investigation of intelligence,self-concept,socioeconomic status,race, and sex as predictors of career maturity

A multiple regression procedure was used to develop a further understanding of the relationship of self-concept (SC), intelligence (IQ), socioeconomic status (SES), and race, and sex to career maturity as measured by the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI). Subjects included in the study were 266 twelfth-graders [46 black males (BM), 50 black females (BF), 92 white males (WM), and 78 white females (WF)]. The results suggested that when predicting career maturity as measured by the CMI, a separate equation utilizing different predictors, depending on race and sex of subjects should be considered. Results further indicated that socio-economic status and self-concept seem to have a differential effect upon career maturity.     

The relationship of moral judgment, self-awareness, and sex to complicance behavior

Sixty male and sixty female college students, representing three of Kohlberg's stages of moral judgment, were exposed to a complicance situation in which their personal count of a series of metronome clicks was contradicted by a unanimous group. Group differences were either one or two steps from veridical. For half of the subjects self-awareness was experimentally increased. The results indicated that subjects in moral judgment Stages 3 and 4 complied significantly more than Stage 5 subjects. The self-awareness manipulation produced a complex pattern of results in the form of a three way interaction with moral judgment and type of compliance. Finally, sex differences in compliance behavior were significant, with females complying more than males. The results were discussed in terms of a cognition-behavior relationship.     

Mate retention tactics in Spain: personality, sex differences, and relationship status

Mate retention is an important problem in romantic relationships because of mate poachers, infidelity, and the risk of outright defection. The current study (N=892) represents the first study of mate retention tactics conducted in Spain. We tested hypotheses about the effects of gender, relationship commitment status, and personality on mate retention tactics. Women and men differed in the use of resource display, appearance enhancement, intrasexual violence, and submission/self-abasement as mate retention tactics. Those in more committed relationships reported higher levels of resource display, appearance enhancement, love, and verbal signals of possession. Those in less committed relationships more often reported intentionally evoking jealousy in their partner as a mate retention tactic. Personality characteristics, particularly Neuroticism and Agreeableness, correlated in coherent ways with mate retention tactics, supporting two evolution-based hypotheses. Discussion focuses on the implications, future research directions, and interdisciplinary syntheses emerging between personality and social psychology and evolutionary psychology.     

The relationship of the family social environment, peer influences, and peer relationships to altruistic orientation in Chinese children

This study investigated the correlation between the family social environment, peer influences, and peer relationships to altruistic orientation in Chinese children. Results in the present study showed that (a) altruistic orientation measured by the Child Altruism Inventory (H. K. Ma & M. C. Leung, 1991) was directly associated with a positive family social environment, (b) altruistic orientation was directly associated with positive peer influences and was inversely associated with negative peer influences, and (c) altruistic orientation was directly associated with perceived prosocial behavior of one's best friend and inversely associated with perceived antisocial behavior of one's best friend. The findings suggested that a good family social environment, positive peer influences, and good peer relationships tended to increase altruistic orientation.     

Pregnant women's social status, stress, self-esteem, and their infants' sex ratio at birth

A reported association of social status of parents with infants' sex ratio at birth and of psychological stress (score on Beck Depression Inventory) with sex ratio were not supported by our analysis, but the possibility of an association between scores on the Rosenberg Self-esteem scale and sex ratio at birth for a sample of 385 pregnant women showed that women who have given birth to boys scored lower on self-esteem during pregnancy than those who have given birth to girls. Some explanations are reviewed to discuss this unforeseen association.     

The relationship of confabulation to the memory,intelligence, suggestibility and personality of prison inmates

This study investigates the relationship of confabulation to memory, intelligence, suggestibility and personality, as measured by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the Gough Socialisation Scale. The subjects were 255 Icelandic prison inmates. Confabulation was measured from the memory narrative of the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS 1). The two components of confabulation—distortions and fabrications—were scored and analysed separately. Distortions and fabrications correlated poorly with each other. Furthermore, the confabulation scores correlated very poorly with the other psychological variables. The only positive correlations were a positive relationship with GSS Shift and a negative relationship with intelligence.