The social concomitants of competitive and impatient/aggressive components of the Type A behavior pattern in preschool children: peer responses and teacher utterances in a naturalistic setting

The Matthews Youth Test for Health (MYTH) was used to classify 120 children from 9 preschool classrooms as high or low on behaviors associated with the Type A pattern. Peer responses to the children were gathered sociometrically and utterances of classroom teachers were tape recorded in a naturalistic setting. Boys gave higher sociometric ratings to high competitive girls and girls gave higher ratings to low-competitive boys. Teacher verbal utterances addressed to high-competitive children were characterized by less challenging cognitive processes and lower affective quality. Teacher verbal utterances addressed to children high on impatience/aggression were characterized by lower affective quality, fewer opportunities for child autonomy, more social/behavioral instructions, and more physical expressions of affection.