Adolescents' negative expectations of their peers were examined as predictors of their future selection of hostile partners, in a community sample of 184 adolescents followed from ages 13 to 24. Utilizing observational data, close friend- and self-reports, adolescents with more negative expectations at age 13 were found to be more likely to form…

This study examined the moderating role of classroom injunctive norms salience regarding social withdrawal and regarding aggression in the longitudinal association between these behaviors and peer victimization. A total of 1,769 fourth through sixth graders (895 girls, M = 10.25 years, SD = 1.03) from 23 schools (67 classrooms) completed a peer…

Children's peer relationships have their origins in family relationships. The present study focuses on the relative importance of children's levels of responsiveness and/or resistance during mother-child interactions and tests a model of the direct and indirect relations between mother interaction behaviors and children's social behaviors with…

Research has established that long-term exposure to peer victimization is associated with higher levels of emotional and behavioral maladjustment. Yet, relatively little is known regarding predictors of stable versus declining victimization across extended periods of time. To fill this knowledge gap, the present study used latent growth curve…

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between maternal reports of social fear at 24 months and social behaviors with an unfamiliar peer during play at 36 months, using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Kashy & Kenny, 1999). The APIM model was used to not only replicate previous findings of direct effects of…

This study examined the peer relationships and social behaviors of deaf adolescents in the first 2 years of secondary school. Peer nominations and ratings of peer status and behavior were collected longitudinally with 74 deaf and 271 hearing adolescents from Grade 7 to Grade 8. The predictions of deaf adolescents' peer status in Grade 8 from Grade…

Behavioral inhibition is a temperament assessed in the toddler period via children's responses to novel contexts, objects, and unfamiliar adults. Social reticence is observed as onlooking, unoccupied behavior in the presence of unfamiliar peers and is linked to earlier behavioral inhibition. In the current study, we assessed behavioral inhibition…

This study used a genetically informed design to assess the effects of friends' and nonfriends' reticent and dominant behaviors on children's observed social reticence in a competitive situation. Potential gene-environment correlations (rGE) and gene-environment interactions (GxE) in the link between (a) friends' and…

The construct of moral disengagement has increasingly been used by researchers to account for the asymmetry between children's moral reasoning and their moral behavior. According to this theory, moral disengagement occurs most aptly when children are motivated to violate their moral beliefs, such as when they hold antisocial goals during social…

Transactional relations between children's positive social interaction skills, school engagement, and academic achievement were examined using a longitudinal panel model across the transition from preschool to first grade. Participants were Head Start children (N = 241; 49% girls, M age = 53 months, range 45-60); 78% were Mexican/Mexican-American;…

The current study used developmental trajectories to examine the relationship between internalising and externalising behaviours and victimisation over the transition period from primary to secondary school. Data were collected using a self-completion questionnaire four times over 3 years from 3,459 students aged 11-14 years. Students were tracked…

The focus of our study is social status among first graders. In particular, we will consider the relationship between acceptance and rejection, and how these are connected to three social behavioral traits: bullying, victimization, and social withdrawal. The data set is from peer nominations of 748 children from 49 classrooms in the southwest of…

Research connecting children's understanding of mental states to their peer relations at school remains scarce. Previous work by the authors demonstrated that children's understanding of mental states in the context of a faux pas--a social blunder involving unintentional insult--is associated with concurrent peer rejection. The present report…

Young gifted children perform in the top 10% in assessments of cognitive, social, expressive or other abilities. The study first considers why, and how, cognitively gifted pupils in particular may face enforced underachievement as early as in preschool. A longitudinal multilevel model is developed to represent various types of interaction between…

We examine how extended engagement in argumentation with peers leads to enhanced metalevel understanding of argumentive discourse. Following such engagement, young adolescents demonstrated enhanced understanding of counterargument and use of evidence as objectives of skilled argumentation, relative to a nonparticipating comparison group. Among the…