Friendship Quality and Social Development in Preschool Children

Funder

Organizational Unit

Publications

Affiliative subgroups in preschool classrooms: Integrating constructs and methods from social ethology and sociometric traditions

Publication . Santos, António José; Daniel, João Rodrigo; Fernandes, Carla; Vaughn, Brian E.

Recent studies of school-age children and adolescents have used social network analyses to characterize selection and socialization aspects of peer groups. Fewer network studies have been reported for preschool classrooms and many of those have focused on structural descriptions of peer networks, and/or, on selection processes rather than on social functions of subgroup membership. In this study we started by identifying and describing different types of affiliative subgroups (HMP- high mutual proximity, LMP- low mutual proximity, and ungrouped children) in a sample of 240 Portuguese preschool children using nearest neighbor observations. Next, we used additional behavioral observations and sociometric data to show that HMP and LMP subgroups are functionally distinct: HMP subgroups appear to reflect friendship relations, whereas LMP subgroups appear to reflect common social goals, but without strong, within-subgroup dyadic ties. Finally, we examined the longitudinal implications of subgroup membership and show that children classified as HMP in consecutive years had more reciprocated friendships than did children whose subgroup classification changed from LMP or ungrouped to HMP. These results extend previous findings reported for North American peer groups.

2015Journal article

Open access

Social engagement and adaptive functioning during early childhood: Identifying and distinguishing among subgroups differing with regard to social engagement

Publication . Vaughn, Brian E.; Santos, António José; Monteiro, Lígia Maria Santos; Shin, Nana; Daniel, João Rodrigo; Krzysik, Lisa; Pinto, Alexandra Maria Pereira Inácio Sequeira

This study tested the hypothesis that social engagement (SE) with peers is a fundamental aspect of social competence during early childhood. Relations between SE and a set of previously validated social competence indicators, as well as additional variables derived from observation and sociometric interviews were assessed using both variable-centered and person-centered approaches (N = 1453, 696 girls) in 4 samples (3 U.S.A., 1 Portuguese). Directly observed SE was positively associated with broad-band measures of socially competent behavior, peer acceptance, being a target of peers' attention, and also with broad-band personality dimensions. Using individual Q-items significantly associated with SE in 3 of our 4 samples, a hierarchical cluster analysis yielded a 5-cluster solution that grouped cases efficiently. Tests on relations between cluster membership and the set of social competence and other variables revealed significant main effects of cluster membership in the full sample and within each individual sample, separately. With the exception of tests for peer negative preference, children in the lowest SE cluster also had significantly lower overall social competence, personality functioning scores than did children in higher SE clusters.

2016-09Journal article

Restricted access

Perception accuracy of affiliative relationships in elementary school children and young adolescents

Publication . Daniel, João Rodrigo; Silva, Rita Rocha da; Santos, António José; Cardoso, Jordana Pinto; Coelho, Leandra Marques; Freitas, Miguel da Costa Nunes de; Ribeiro, Olívia

There has been a rapid growth of studies focused on selection and socialization processes of peer groups, mostly due to the development of stochastic actor-based models to analyze longitudinal social network data. One of the core assumptions of these models is that individuals have an accurate knowledge of the dyadic relationships within their network (i.e., who is and is not connected to whom). Recent cross-sectional findings suggest that elementary school children are very inaccurate in perceiving their classmates' dyadic relationships. These findings question the validity of stochastic actor-based models to study the developmental dynamics of children and carry implications for future research as well as for the interpretation of past findings. The goal of the present study was thus to further explore the adequacy of the accuracy assumption, analysing data from three longitudinal samples of different age groups (elementary school children and adolescents). Our results support the validity of stochastic actor-based models to study the network of adolescents and suggest that the violation of the accuracy assumption for elementary school children is not as severe as previously thought.

2017Journal article

Open access

Structural descriptions of social transactions among young children: Affiliation and dominance in preschool groups

Publication . Vaughn, Brian E.; Santos, António José

Describing and explaining the benefits and costs of sociality have occupied the attention of political, social, and economic philosophers and social, behavioral, and developmental scientists for over 400 years (e.g., Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Smith, Marx, Darwin, G. S. Hall, Baldwin, Freud, Kropotkin, J. Moreno, Hinde, Kummer, McGrath, to name a few). The fundamental questions have been why and how it is that self- interest becomes subordinated (or not) to the interests of group comembers and why or how group norms, values, and structures change as a consequence of the actions of their constituent members and/or the embedding contexts of the group.

2009Book part

Restricted access