Family-peer linkages: The role of affective exchanges between children of varying degrees of social acceptance and their parents and peers

This study focused on the role of children's emotional communication skills as a possible link between the quality of children's interactions with parents and peers. Participants were forty-five preschool children and their mothers and fathers. Sociometric peer acceptance data and teacher ratings of sharing, aggression, interrupting, avoidance, popularity and rejection were collected at the children's preschools. A physical play paradigm called "The Hand Game" which permitted children and play partners to engage in physically stimulating play and yet which permitted clear recording of participants' facial expressions was used to examine children's play with three randomly selected same sex peer partners, and children's parents. Interactions were coded second-by-second using a system of fourteen mutually exclusive and exhaustive codes for different types of emotional expressions. Both parents and children were also asked to identify slides of facial expressions of happy, sad, mad, scared, surprised, and disgust.The affective quality of children's interactions with fathers predicted children's peer acceptance, and teacher ratings of sharing, aggressive, and interruptive behaviors. In particular the extent to which fathers engaged in reciprocal negative affect exchanges with their children was a strong negative predictor of children's sharing behavior and a strong positive predictor of children's aggressive behavior as rated by teachers. The affective quality of children's interactions with mothers predicted peer avoidance as rated by teachers. The affective quality of children's interactions with peers predicted a number of peer acceptance and teacher rated behaviors. A more assertive style of interaction positively predicted teacher and sociometric measures of boys' peer acceptance. A more boisterous style of interaction (intense displays of positive affect) negatively predicted girls' sharing and positively predicted girls' aggressive behaviors as rated by teachers. The implications of the findings for theories of family-peer relationships were discussed, especially the need for greater attention to the role of affective processes in accounting for the links across these two social systems.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio