Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling (2nd ed.)

Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist

The chapter begins with a distinction made between the interactions children have with peers, the relationships they form with peers, and the groups and networks within which peer interactions and relationships occur. From this conceptual overview, a review of relevant theories is presented. Thereafter, a developmental perspective of peer interactions, relationships, and groups is presented covering the periods of infancy, toddlerhood, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence. Subsequently, methods and measures pertaining to the study of children's peer experiences are described. Next, we examine factors that may account for peer acceptance and rejection as well as qualitatively rich and poor friendships. Among the factors discussed are included temperament (biological factors), sex of child, parenting, parent-child relationships, and culture. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the extent to which individual differences in peer acceptance, rejection and friendship (prevalence and quality) predict adaptive and maladaptive developmental outcomes and a suggested agenda for future research.


Keywords:

friendship;
peer interactions;
peer relationships;
peer rejection;
social acceptance;
social competence

Peer Interactions, Relationships, and Groups

“WHAT can men do, what do they do, and what do they want to do ?”—these are the uestions that Prof. Thorndike seeks to answer in a very comprehensive and elaborate treatise. His undertaking is inspired by the belief that man has the possibility of almost complete control of his fate if only he will be guided by science, and that his failures are attributable to ignorance or folly. The main approach is through biological psychology, but all the social sciences are appealed to and utilized in an effort to deal with the human problem as a whole. The relative immaturity of the sciences dealing with man is continually stressed, but it is claimed that they provide a body of facts and principles which are “far above zero knowledge”, and that even now they are capable of affording valuable guidance in the shaping of public policy. Human Nature and the Social Order By E. L. Thorndike. Pp. xx + 1020. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1940.) 18s. net.

Human Nature and the Social Order

Objective Disease containment of COVID-19 has necessitated widespread social isolation. We aimed to establish what is known about how loneliness and disease containment measures impact on the mental health in children and adolescents. Method For this rapid review, we searched MEDLINE, PsycInfo, and Web of Science for articles published between January 1, 1946, and March 29, 2020. Of the articles, 20% were double screened using predefined criteria, and 20% of data was double extracted for quality assurance. Results A total of 83 articles (80 studies) met inclusion criteria. Of these, 63 studies reported on the impact of social isolation and loneliness on the mental health of previously healthy children and adolescents (n = 51,576; mean age 15.3 years). In all, 61 studies were observational, 18 were longitudinal, and 43 were cross-sectional studies assessing self-reported loneliness in healthy children and adolescents. One of these studies was a retrospective investigation after a pandemic. Two studies evaluated interventions. Studies had a high risk of bias, although longitudinal studies were of better methodological quality. Social isolation and loneliness increased the risk of depression, and possibly anxiety at the time at which loneliness was measured and between 0.25 and 9 years later. Duration of loneliness was more strongly correlated with mental health symptoms than intensity of loneliness. Conclusion Children and adolescents are probably more likely to experience high rates of depression and most likely anxiety during and after enforced isolation ends. This may increase as enforced isolation continues. Clinical services should offer preventive support and early intervention where possible and be prepared for an increase in mental health problems.

Rapid Systematic Review: The Impact of Social Isolation and Loneliness on the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents in the Context of COVID-19.

Socially withdrawn children frequently refrain from social activities in the presence of peers. The lack of social interaction in childhood may result from a variety of causes, including social fear and anxiety or a preference for solitude. From early childhood through to adolescence, socially withdrawn children are concurrently and predictively at risk for a wide range of negative adjustment outcomes, including socio-emotional difficulties (e.g., anxiety, low self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and internalizing problems), peer difficulties (e.g., rejection, victimization, poor friendship quality), and school difficulties (e.g., poor-quality teacher-child relationships, academic difficulties, school avoidance). The goals of the current review are to (a) provide some definitional, theoretical, and methodological clarity to the complex array of terms and constructs previously employed in the study of social withdrawal; (b) examine the predictors, correlates, and consequences of child and early-adolescent soc...

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Social withdrawal in childhood

Influence of peers and friends on children's and adolescents' eating and activity behaviors.

The features, processes, and effects of children's experiences with their peers exist on multiple levels of social complexity and intersect with many other developmental domains. Peers are implicated in several theoretical accounts of multiple development domains, including the models proposed by Piaget, Sullivan, the social learning theorists, Vygotsky, ethologists, and the symbolic interactionists. The extensive data base on peer relations points to the diverse set of positive and negative experiences that children and adolescents can have with their peers and to the breadth of the processes that account for peer effects on multiple forms of outcome including behavior (e.g., aggression), affect (e.g., depression, anxiety), school performance, self-perceptions, moral perspectives, and physical and mental health. The chapter reviews the effects of several experiences including acceptance and rejection, exclusion, friendship, victimization, popularity, and experiences within groups. Specific attention is devoted to variation in processes and effects as a function of culture and gender.


Keywords:

acceptance;
achievement;
attraction;
cohesion;
exclusion;
friendship;
groups;
interactions;
multilevel model;
norms;
peers popularity;
rejection;
relationships;
social complexity;
sociometry;
victimization

Children in Peer Groups

An early view of the development of adaptive and maladaptive behaviors during childhood
and adolescence suggested that such outcomes stemmed largely from the quality of the child’s
relationship with his or her parents and from the types of socialization practices that the
parents engaged in. This primary focus on the developmental signiﬁcance of the parent-child
relationship and of parenting practices was proposed early by Freud (1933) in his theory of
psychosexual development, by Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (1957) in their seminal research on
the signiﬁcance of discipline variability and social learning, and by Bowlby (1958) in his
inﬂuential writings on the long-term developmental importance of the mother-infant
attachment relationship. Without denying the veracity of these claims, it is nevertheless the
case that adjustment and maladjustment in childhood stem from a wide variety of sources
including genetic and biological underpinnings and social inﬂuences other than parents. For
example, children and adolescents spend enormous amounts of time, both in and out of
home, relating to and interacting with many other people of potential inﬂuence. These signiﬁcant others include their siblings, teachers or out-of-home caregivers, and peers. Children’s
peers are the focus of the present chapter.

Peer Relationships in Childhood

Heterogeneity and individual differences in the developmental course of social withdrawal were examined longitudinally in a community sample (N = 392). General Growth Mixture Modeling (GGMM) was used to identify distinct pathways of social withdrawal, differentiate valid subgroup trajectories, and examine factors that predicted change in trajectories within subgroups. Assessments of individual (social withdrawal), interactive (prosocial behavior), relationship (friendship involvement, stability and quality, best friend’s withdrawal and exclusion/victimization) and group- (exclusion/victimization) level characteristics were used to define growth trajectories from the final year of elementary school, across the transition to middle school, and then to the final year of middle school (fifth-to-eighth grades). Three distinct trajectory classes were identified: low stable, increasing, and decreasing. Peer exclusion, prosocial behavior, and mutual friendship involvement differentiated class membership. Friendlessness, friendship instability, and exclusion were significant predictors of social withdrawal for the increasing class, whereas lower levels of peer exclusion predicted a decrease in social withdrawal for the decreasing class.

Julie C. Bowker

Papers

Social withdrawal in childhood

Influence of peers and friends on children's and adolescents' eating and activity behaviors.

Children in Peer Groups

Peer Relationships in Childhood

Trajectories of social withdrawal from middle childhood to early adolescence.