The role of cognitive abilities in children's inferences about social atypicality and peer exclusion and inclusion in intergroup contexts

Children aged 6–7 years judged a loyal and a partially disloyal member of a school in terms of how typical they are within the school group and their likely acceptance by peers from the same school and a different school. Second‐order mental‐state understanding (SOMSU) predicted whether children thought atypical members would be included differently in the two groups. Counterfactual reasoning ability, multiple classification ability, and working memory ability did not predict children's judgements of group members. Moreover, as predicted by the developmental subjective group dynamics model, only children with higher levels of SOMSU and who discerned differences in the typicality of normative and deviant ingroup members inferred that peers would differently include atypical individuals from the same and different groups.     

Young children overimitate in third-party contexts

The exhibition of actions that are causally unnecessary to the outcomes with which they are associated is a core feature of human cultural behavior. To enter into the world(s) of their cultural in-group, children must learn to assimilate such unnecessary actions into their own behavioral repertoire. Past research has established the habitual tendency of children to adopt the redundant actions of adults demonstrated directly to them. Here we document how young children will do so even when such actions are modeled to a third person regardless of whether children are presented with the test apparatus by the demonstrating, and assumedly expert, adult or by the observing, and assumedly naive, adult (Experiment 1), whether or not children had opportunity to discover how the apparatus works prior to modeling (Experiment 1), and whether or not children's attention was drawn to the demonstration while they were otherwise occupied (Experiment 2). These results emphasize human children's readiness to acquire behavior that is in keeping with what others do, regardless of the apparent efficiency of the actions employed, and in so doing to participate in cultural learning.     

Mother–child and father–child mutuality in two contexts: consequences for young children's peer relationships

This study examines the role that context plays in links between relative balance, or mutuality in parent–child interaction and children's social competence. Sixty‐three toddlers and their parents were observed in a laboratory play session and caregiving activity (i.e. eating snack). Mutuality was operationalised as the relative balance in (a) partners' compliance to initiations, and (b) partners' expression of positive emotion. Caregivers rated children's social competence with peers, and children's prosocial and aggressive behaviour with peers was observed in their childcare arrangement. Contextual differences were observed in the manifestation of parent–child mutuality, with both mother–child and father–child dyads displaying higher mutual compliance scores in the play context than in the caregiving context. Father–child dyads also displayed higher levels of shared positive emotion during play than during the caregiving context. There were no differences in a way that parent–child mutuality during play and caregiving was associated with children's social competence with peers. Overall, the results suggest that parent–child mutuality is a quality of parent–child interaction that has consistent links to children's peer competence regardless of the context in which it occurs. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Victimization in South Korean children's peer groups

This study reports a cross-sectional investigation of the behavioral, academic, and psychosocial correlates of victimization in South Korean children's peer groups. The participants were 122 children (66 boys, 56 girls; from 10–12-years-old) recruited from a primary school in Seoul, South Korea. Multi-informant assessments (peer nominations, teacher ratings, and self-reports) of peer victimization, social behavior, loneliness/social dissatisfaction, and academic functioning were obtained. Multivariate analyses indicated that peer victimization was associated with poor academic adjustment, loneliness, submissive–withdrawn behavior, aggression, and low levels of assertive–prosocial behavior. These findings suggest that there is considerable similarity in the social processes underlying peer group victimization across South Korean and Western cultural settings.     

Sexism and beautyism in women's evaluations of peer performance

The purpose of this study was to investigate independent and interactive effects of physical attractiveness (PA), sex, and task sex-typing on performance evaluations. Subjects were 216 college women who read poorquality essays written on masculine, feminine, or neutral topics. Essays supposedly were written by a male or a female student who was either attractive, unattractive, or physically unidentified. Results indicated that PA enhanced evaluations of both male and female essayists, except for the predicted effect that female attractiveness is less beneficial for masculine than feminine task performances. Women did not evaluate the sexes differently, and sexism was largely restricted to the interactive effects of PA. PA stereotypes also affected causal attributions of performers' outcomes in a manner consistent with attribution theory. These data are considered in the context of the existing literature and the directions for further research on sexism and beautyism.     

Young children's numerical competence

In their analysis of numerical competence, Creeno, Riley, and Gelman 1984 distinguish between conceptual, procedural, and utilization competence. Principled knowledge about a domain, for example, counting, serves as the basis of conceptual competence. Conceptual competence does not provide recipes for procedures but does set constraints on the class of procedures that procedural competence can generate. The ability to assess a task correctly (utilization competence) influences performance because it, too, sets constraints on procedure generation. These distinctions allow one to classify the source of erroneous or variable performances on different number tasks. Our hypothesis that early counting behavior is guided by counting principles, despite the child's limited skill, is tested in four experiments with children ranging in age from 3 to 5 years old. The experiments focus on knowledge of the order-irrelevance and cardinal count principles; children either discriminate between erroneous and correct counting efforts of a puppet, assess the effect of counting the same array in different orders, or solve a counting task that has a constraint. The results of these studies allow us to reinterpret evidence others cite against the principle-first hypothesis, and conclude that much development takes place in the name of procedural and utilization competence.     

Sex differences in children's discrepant perceptions of peer acceptance

Sex differences in children's play patterns during middle childhood are thought to promote greater awareness of social acceptance among girls compared with boys. The present study posited that girls are more discerning of peer acceptance than are boys; however, these sex differences were predicted to vary depending on how discrepant perceptions were assessed (i.e., inaccuracy versus bias). Additional differences were expected if children perceived acceptance by same- versus opposite-sex peers. Participants were 912 third through fifth graders (420 girls and 492 boys). Consistent with predictions, boys were more inaccurate than girls, but only for perceived acceptance by same-sex peers. As expected, girls were more negatively biased than boys, but only for perceived acceptance by opposite-sex peers. Results did not support the hypothesis that boys have more positively biased perceptions of peer acceptance than girls. Overall, these findings raise important issues regarding the evaluation of children's discrepant self-perceptions of peer acceptance.     

Correlates of victimization in Chinese children's peer groups.

This study reports a cross-sectional investigation of the behavioral and academic correlates of victimization in Chinese children's peer groups. The participants were 296 children (161 boys and 135 girls; mean age = 11.5 years) from Tianjin, China. Multi-informant assessments (peer nominations, teacher ratings, and self-reports) of peer victimization, aggression, submissiveness-withdrawal, assertiveness-prosociability, and academic functioning were obtained. Structural equation models indicated that peer victimization was associated with poor academic functioning, submissive-withdrawn behavior, aggression, and low levels of assertive-prosocial behavior. These findings suggest that there is considerable similarity in the social processes underlying peer group victimization across Chinese and Western cultural settings.     

Young children's interest in live animals

Animals are important stimuli for humans, and for children in particular. In three experiments, we explored children's affinity for animals. In Experiment 1, 11‐ to 40‐month‐old children were presented with a free‐play session in which they were encouraged to interact with several interesting toys and two live animals – a fish and a hamster. Experiment 2 used the same methodology with 18‐ to 36‐month‐old children and two additional animals – a snake and a spider – to examine whether children's behaviours would differ for benign and potentially threatening animals. Finally, in Experiment 3, a more controlled paired‐preference paradigm was employed to assess 18‐ to 33‐month‐old children's interactions with three live animals – a fish, hamster, and gecko – versus three physically similar toy animals. Across all three experiments, children interacted with the animals more often than with the toys. Further, they behaved differently towards the animals than the toys, talking about the animals more than the toys and asking more questions about them. The parents of the children also spent more time interacting with the animals, directing their children's attention more towards the animals than the toys. This research supports the idea that humans have an affinity for animals that draws their attention to animals, even when attractive toys are present.     

Minority children's intergroup attitudes about peer relationships

Intergroup attitudes were assessed in African‐American (N=70) and non‐African‐American minority (N=80) children, evenly divided by gender, in first (M=6.5 years old) and fourth (M=9.6 years old) grades attending mixed‐ethnicity public schools in a suburban area of a large mid‐Atlantic city in the USA. Children were interviewed to test hypotheses about implicit racial biases, perceptions of similarity between peer dyads, and judgments about cross‐race friendships. Implicit racial biases emerged when children evaluated ambiguous picture cards, with children viewing a White child as more likely to be a transgressor than a Black child in certain situations. There were no racial biases when evaluating potential cross‐race friendship (it was judged to be feasible); nor was there any evidence of an outgroup homogeneity effect. Children who used ethnicity as a reason for judging peers to be similar, however, were less likely to judge that the cross‐race dyads could be friends. The findings indicate the ways in which minority children's judgments about the majority and their perceptions of similarity between peer dyads influence their interpretations of peer interactions.     

Young children's understanding of diversity in pretense

Four studies probed preschoolers' understanding of diversity in the domain of pretense. In Study 1, 3- and 4-year-olds were shown video skits in which two characters pretended different things with the same object. To assess preschoolers understanding that the mind is involved in pretense, thought bubbles were superimposed over the actors' heads. Results of this study indicated that both 3- and 4-year-olds appreciate the potential for diversity in pretense, and understand pretense to be a mental activity. Results of Study 2 replicate Study 1, and argue against alternative explanations for participants' good performance in that study. Studies 3 and 4 compared the unique contributions made by dialogs and thought bubbles and revealed that 3-year-olds relied more on actors' mental contents than on their actions or dialogs when reasoning about pretense. Results of the studies are discussed in terms of children's developing understanding of the subjective and mental aspects of pretense, and the implications of this understanding for the development of their understanding of mind more generally.     

Stability of aggressive behaviors and children's peer relationships

The present research longitudinally evaluated the association of group and dyadic peer relation factors to the stability of aggression. Beginning in grades 2 through 5, children (N = 212) completed peer nominations for aggressive behaviors, sociometric ratings, sociometric nominations (like most and like least), and friendship nominations for 2 successive years. Children were classified into four Stability of Aggression Groups: Never Aggressive, Stable Aggressive, Discontinued Aggression, Became Aggressive. Aggressive children were evaluated as more disliked at each time of testing (i.e., Stable Aggressive and Discontinued Aggression at Time 1; Stable Aggressive and Became Aggressive at Time 2). Furthermore, sociometric ratings of children at Time 1 who became aggressive by Time 2 foreshadowed this transition. Children who discontinued aggressive behaviors were friends with children who were evaluated by peers as significantly less aggressive than the friends of children who continued aggressive behaviors. These findings suggest that early identification of children at risk for developing aggressive behavior may be possible through group‐level peer evaluations, and identification of those at risk for continuing aggressive behavior may be possible through the evaluation of special dyadic friendships. Aggr. Behav. 26:277–290, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Young children's haptic exploratory procedures

Adults vary their haptic exploratory behavior reliably with variation both in the sensory input and in the task goals. Little is known about the development of these connections between perceptual goals and exploratory behaviors. A total of 36 children ages 3, 4, and 5 years and 20 adults completed a haptic intramodal match-to-sample task. Participants were instructed to feel the shape, texture, rigidity, or weight of a sample object and then were asked to find which of three test objects matched the sample on that specific property. Hand movements were examined to determine whether children produced the same exploratory procedures while gathering perceptual information about each property as adults who searched for the same kind of information. Children demonstrated that they had good haptic abilities in two ways: They matched the sample objects on the specified perceptual dimension at near ceiling levels, and they produced the same hand movement patterns to find the same properties as adults.     

Contextual determinants of mothers' interventions in young children's peer interactions

In this study, the role of context in mothers' interventions in their preschool children's peer relationship problems was investigated. Event theme (aggression, peer rebuff, or initiating play), the child's role in the event (actor or target), the child's age and sex, and the mother's emotional reaction were examined as predictors of the extent to which mothers (N = 71) said they would discuss peer relationships, encourage peer interaction, and use power assertion in response to a series of videotaped vignettes depicting common peer relationship problems. Mothers suggested using more discussion in aggressive situations and more encouragement in initiating play situations. Mothers said they would use more power assertion when the child was the actor (i.e., provocateur), rather than the target, in an aggressive situation. Findings are discussed in terms of (a) the importance of considering context in understanding how mothers intervene in their children's peer relationships and (b) the need to examine moderators of cross-contextual consistency in mothers' interventions.     

Young children's discovery of spatial classification

Around the age of 18 months, children begin to classify objects spatially by kind, placing objects of the same kind close together in space and placing unlike objects apart. This behavior may be symbolic in the sense that children use spatial proximity to represent similarity. We examined the possibility that spatial classification is discovered during play—that the external products of play lead children to use space to represent similarity. Experiment 1 was a longitudinal study of four children's classification behaviors, observed from the age of 16 to 21 months. Results suggest that play with one kind of object to the exclusion of another kind leads to the discovery of spatial classification. Experiment 2 examined how children's tendencies to interact with one category might promote spatial classification of multiple categories. Twenty-four 18-month-old children who did not yet spatially classify objects by kind participated. Children who were given the experience of playing with two kinds of objects in a context that promoted interaction with only one kind were more likely to demonstrate spontaneous spatial classification of multiple kinds in a subsequent test period. Children who played equally with both kinds did not show heightened spontaneous classification. The results further suggest that comparison of different kinds during play is critical to the spontaneous occurrence of spatial classification.     

Young children's understanding of desire formation

Two studies examined preschoolers' appreciation of how mental states arise. In Study 1, children aged 3 to 5 (24 at each age) better understood perception-generated beliefs (e.g., that looking in a certain location generates a belief about the location's content) and attitude-generated desires (e.g., that positive experiences with an activity generate a desire to partake of the activity again) than physiology-generated desires (e.g., that not eating for a long time generates a desire for food). In Study 2, 4- and 5-year-olds (48 at each age) better understood the effects of quantity of experience (e.g., eating a lot vs. a little) than of time of experience (eating just now vs. a long time ago) on physiological states and desires. The findings suggest that whether children reason in more advanced fashion about desires or beliefs depends on which aspects of these mental states are considered.     

Young children's comprehension of number markers

Young children's comprehension of four number markers (demonstratives, regular nouns, third person of the auxiliary be, and regular present tense verbs) was investigated through their presentation in sentences conveying non-redundant information about number. Comprehension of each sentence was tested in two tasks: pointing to one of a pair of line drawings and acting out with toys the action described by a sentence. The results indicated that, firstly, the number information carried by the verb is rarely attended to or mastered before some component of the noun phrase; and, secondly, that the is/are allomorphs of the auxiliary be are mastered much earlier than the singular and plural forms of third-person regular present tense verbs. Both the overall order of difficulty in understanding the four number markers investigated and the analysis of individual data were consistent with the developmental sequence reported by several authors for the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in spontaneous speech production.     

Young children's spontaneous use of geometry in maps

Two experiments tested whether 4-year-old children extract and use geometric information in simple maps without task instruction or feedback. Children saw maps depicting an arrangement of three containers and were asked to place an object into a container designated on the map. In Experiment 1, one of the three locations on the map and the array was distinct and therefore served as a landmark; in Experiment 2, only angle, distance and sense information specified the target container. Children in both experiments used information for distance and angle, but not sense, showing signature error patterns found in adults. Children thus show early, spontaneously developing abilities to detect geometric correspondences between three-dimensional layouts and two-dimensional maps, and they use these correspondences to guide navigation. These findings begin to chart the nature and limits of the use of core geometry in a uniquely human, symbolic task.     

Young children's use of prosody in sentence parsing

Korean children's ability to use prosodic phrasing in sentence comprehension was studied using two types of ambiguity. First, we examined a word-segmentation ambiguity in which placement of the phrasal boundary leads to different interpretations of a sentence. Next, we examined a syntactic ambiguity in which the same words were differently grouped into syntactic phrases by prosodic demarcation. Children aged 3 or 4 years showed that they could use prosodic information to segment utterances and to derive the meaning of ambiguous sentences when the sentences only contained a word-segmentation ambiguity. However, even 5- to 6-year-old children were not able to reliably resolve the second type of ambiguity, an ambiguity of phrasal grouping, by using prosodic information. The results demonstrate that children's difficulties in dealing with structural ambiguity are not due to their inability to use prosodic information.     

The effects of peer ostracism on children's cognitive processes

In adults, experiences of social exclusion have been shown to not only adversely affect mood and threaten primary needs, but also to disrupt cognitive processes. The aim of this study was to provide an initial test of the effects of social exclusion on cognitive processes in children (N = 55; aged 8–12 years). Ostracism was simulated experimentally using the Cyberball paradigm—a computer-based ball-throwing game that participants believed they were playing with two peers over the internet. Following this, participants were administered subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children. Girls who were ostensibly ignored during the game demonstrated poorer cognitive performance than those who were included by their co-players, while boys did not. Findings are discussed in relation to those previously reported in adult research and evidence of gender-specific correlates of relational aggression in children and adolescents.