Peers dev psych

play

• activities that children engage in for inherent enjoyment

• Benefits

  • Learning and practicing empathy

  • Fostering cognitive and language development

  • Enhancing motor development and skills

  • Promoting emotion regulation and increasing positive emotions

Individual Differences: The Development of Social Play

• Parten’s classification of children’s social play remains an important frame for understanding the development of play across early childhood

• Non-social types of play

  • Unoccupied play

  • Onlooker play

  • Solitary play

• Social types of play

  • Parallel play

  • Associative play

  • Cooperative play

Non-social play

Unoccupied play (0-3 months) —> Solitary play 3+ months

• seemingly random body movements, erratic kicks, and sensory observation of surroundings. Though it may not look like traditional play, it is how infants learn about their bodies and the world

Non-social play continued

Onlooker Play (2.5 - 3.5 years)

• where a child watches others play but does not join in

social play

Parallel Play (18 months - 2 years)

• individuals engage in separate activities alongside one another without direct interaction

Associative Play (~3-4 years)

• where children play together, share toys, and converse, but lack organized rules or assigned roles

Cooperative play 3-4 years+

• Children actively collaborate toward a shared goal or participate in an organized activity with defined roles and rules

Friendships

• Peers

  • People of approximately the same age and status

• Friends

  • Peers with whom individuals have intimate, reciprocated, and positive relationships

Children's Choice of Friends

Determinants of friendship

▪ Sociable, similarity of interest and behavior and age

▪ Similar level of cognitive maturity, academic motivations, and school activities

▪ Similar levels of distress and negative emotions

▪ Proximity (important for young children; less for older)

Change in Complexity of Friendship Descriptions Across Childhood

From age 9 on, across four different countries, the complexity of children’s friendship descriptions increased at the same rate, and all were nearly equal in their high ratings of complexity by age 15

How are friendships expressed?

▪ 12–18 months: touching, smiling, engaging in positive interactions

▪ 24 months: Imitating, cooperative problem solving, trading roles during play

▪ By 3–4 years: Make and maintain friends, find a “best friend”, same-gender play preferences

▪ By 5 years: Communicate, cooperate, and work together more effectively, fight and negotiate

▪ By 6–8 years: Define friendship based on actual peer activities

▪ By 9 years: Take care of friends’ physical and material needs, general assistance and help

▪ Adolescence: Important source of intimacy and self-disclosure, honest feedback, less stable

The Role of Technology in Friendships

• Online social media, instant messaging, and texting important in peer interactions

• Creation and maintenance of electronic communication facilitates

  • Greater anonymity

  • Less emphasis on physical appearance

  • More control over interactions

  • Finding similar peers

  • 24/7 access, and it’s fun

• Perspectives on use of technology

  • Rich-get-richer hypothesis: Internet beneficial to those who already are proficient using Internet skills

  • Social-compensation hypothesis: online communications benefits over face-to-face communication for lonely and socially anxious youths. (This is complicated)

  • In contrast: high levels of Internet use primarily for entertainment or for communication with strangers can harm the quality of friendships and predicts increases in anxiety and depression

Effects of Friendships on Psychological Functioning and Behavior

• Support and validation

  • Provide support and validation when a child feels lonely, during difficult periods of transition that involve peers

  • Serve as a buffer against stress or unpleasant experiences when children feel victimized

  • Help develop social skills and positive relationships with other people

• Social and cognitive skill development

  • Help develop social skills and positive relationships with other people, cooperation, negotiation skills

  • Understanding of emotional states, enhances self-esteem, less psychopathology

  • Understanding peer norms, as through gossip

  • Promotes cognitive skills and creative task performance

  • Leads to positive social outcomes in later years, including adulthood

• The possible costs of friendships

  • Aggression and disruptiveness

  • Alcohol and substance abuse

  • Bullying and victimization

• Gender differences in the functions of friendships

  • Girls desire closeness and dependency

    • Worry about abandonment, loneliness

    • Get more upset than boys do when a friend betrays

    • More likely than are boys to co-ruminate

• Girls and boys are less likely to differ

  • In amount of conflict they experience in their best friendships

  • In terms of recreational opportunities provided

Bullying Prevalence

A Closer Look: Cyberbullying

• Cyberbullying is the repeated and intentional harassment or mistreatment of someone through digital devices such as cell phones, computers, and tablets

• Who is bullied?

  • 15% of high school students; girls twice as likely as boys

  • Likely high in social anxiety, psychological distress, depression symptoms

  • Rates highest in 9th grade

  • Gay, lesbian, and bisexual students twice as likely as heterosexual students

• Who bullies?

  • 12% teens; risk factors include belief that aggression is an acceptable problem solving tool; classroom environment that accepts bullying

Measurement of Peer Status

• Sociometric status measures peer acceptance.

  • A measurement that reflects the degree to which children are liked or disliked by their peers as a group

  • Classifies children into one of five groups

    • Popular

    • Rejected

    • Neglected

    • Average

    • Controversial

Characteristics Associated with Sociometric Status

Popular children

▪ Rated accepted and impactful by peers; high status in group

▪ Perceived as socially skilled; cooperative, friendly, sociable, helpful, sensitive to others

▪ Generally possess more emotional and behavioral strengths

Not necessarily most likable in peer group, but

▪ Athletic ability, prestige, physical attractiveness, wealth

▪ Above average in aggression

Rejected children

▪ Children or adolescents liked by few peers and disliked by many peers

▪ Difficulty finding constructive solutions to difficult social situations

▪ Anxious, depressed, lower rated in behavioral competence by teachers

▪ Perhaps have a less developed theory of mind

▪ Rejected children can be Overly aggressive and Withdrawn

Aggressive-rejected children

▪ Especially prone to physical aggression, disruptive behavior, delinquency, and negative behavior (hostility, threatening others)

▪ Socially withdrawn, wary, and often timid

▪ Complex bidirectional relations (adjustment, social competencies, and peer acceptance)

Withdrawn-rejected children

▪ Socially withdrawn, wary, timid, and socially anxious

▪ Timid, and socially anxious, victimized by peers, and many feel isolated, lonely, and depressed

Characteristics Associated with Sociometric Status (part 4)

Neglected children

▪ Withdrawn with peers but are relatively socially competent

▪ Less sociable and less disruptive than average children; avoid aggression

▪ Rated by teachers as being as socially competent as popular children

Controversial children

▪ Liked by quite a few peers, and disliked by quite a few others

▪ Characteristics of both popular and unpopular children

▪ Tend to be cooperative, sociable, good at sports, and humorous; group leaders

Cross-Cultural Similarities and Differences in Factors Related to Peer Status

In several countries

▪ Socially rejected children are aggressive and disruptive.

▪ Popular children are prosocial and have leadership skills.

▪ Withdrawn children are rejected by peers.

Shy Chinese children are different from shy Western children.

▪ Western cultures encourage independence and self-assertion.

▪ Rural areas have a similar impact

The Role of Parents in Children’s Peer Relationships

Parents influence peer relationships.

▪ Directly through monitoring and coaching

▪ Indirectly through their interactions with their children

▪ Early parent–child interactions linked to children’s peer interactions at an older age

A Closer Look: Parents’ Strategies for Shaping Peer Relationships

• The roles of parents

  • Monitoring

    • Young children: orchestrating and monitoring their children’s interactions with peers

    • Elementary school children: allow engagement in social and extracurricular activities

    • Adolescence: knowing where and with whom child is with

  • Coaching

    • Teaching children group-oriented strategies for gaining entry into a group of peers; making suggestions about what to say when entering the group; emotional coaching

Quality on Ongoing Parent–Child Interactions and Peer Relationships

Warm, harmonious family style is linked to socially skilled children who are likeable and cooperative.

Harsh parenting (authoritarian) is linked to unpopular children and being victimized.

Positive relationships with parents can buffer children against negative effects of peer relationships

Peer Stress, Parent Support, and Children’s Depressive Symptoms

When children have high peer stress and low parent support, they experience high levels of depressive symptoms.

In contrast, if they have supportive parents, children have the same level of depressive symptoms regardless of the amount of stress from their peers

Summary

Children’s play becomes more interactive as they age

Children express and understand friendships in more complex ways as they age

You can measure sociometric status as a way to understand friendships and social status within friendship groups

Parents, and attachments play a role in setting up expectations around friendships, and in shaping peer relationships for youth