Preschoolers' peer competence : Developmental perspectives on prosocial behavior, aggression, and social cognition

Abstract: This doctoral thesis explored three broad aspects of preschoolers’ social competence: prosocial behavior, aggression, and social cognition. The longitudinal study followed forty-four children (initially 22-40 months), who were observed in natural peer interactions at their daycare centers during a two-month period in each of three con-secutive years. In addition, social-cognitive data were gathered in individual interviews on two occasions with a year in between. A central concern was to focus on the underlying motives for, rather than on the forms of, prosocial and aggressive behaviors. Motives were inferred from observed contextual cues. The methodological approach engendered important information, which is presented in four papers. Paper I is a manual giving detailed instructions on how to observe and categorize prosocial and aggressive behaviors. Three categories of aggressive behavior were focused on in subsequent papers: reactive aggression, proactive instrumental aggression, and proactive hostile aggression. Further, important differentiations were made between prosocial altruistic behavior, prosocial non-altruistic behavior, and prosocial requested behavior. Paper II set about exploring conceptual and developmental issues concerning prosocial and aggressive behavior. Major findings were (a) high internal consistency among categories of aggressive behavior and low internal consistency among prosocial behaviors; (b) increases in the display frequency of prosocial behavior as children grew older, but no developmental change in the frequency of aggressive dis-plays; (c) individual stability in aggressive behavior and in prosocial altruistic behavior; (d) no gender differences except for somewhat more frequent altruistic performance by girls at the end of the preschool period; and (e) divergent relations between aggression and differentiated prosocial behaviors. Aggression is unrelated to prosocial requested behavior, negatively related to prosocial altruistic behavior, and sometimes positively related to prosocial non-altruistic behavior. Paper III explored links between children’s behavior and their experiences of being targets of peers’ prosocial and aggressive behavior. Major findings were that (a) children’s experiences of being targets of peers’ prosocial and aggressive behavior are not consistent over time; (b) children’s behaviors seem to influence the likelihood of their being targeted for prosocial and aggressive peer behavior, but their target experiences seem not to influence children’s prosocial and aggressive behaviors; and (c) prosocial children tend to be more frequent targets of peers’ prosocial acts, whereas aggressive children seem to be less frequent targets of both prosocial and aggressive peer behavior. Paper IV explored three aspects of social cognition (perspective taking, theory of mind, and processing biases) and their links to children’s prosocial and aggressive behaviors. Major findings were that (a) aspects of children’s social cognition show individual stability across time; (b) children who display proactive hostile aggression may possess advanced theories of mind; (c) a bias toward minimizing awareness of emotional information seems to promote aggressive behavior and to thwart prosocial altruistic behavior; and (d) a bias toward maximizing awareness of potential threats seems to spur reactive aggression and to thwart prosocial altruistic behavior.