Lisa Krzysik

Friendship and social competence in a sample of preschool children attending Head Start.

Relations between friendship (operationalized as reciprocated or nonreciprocated sociometric choices) and social competence were studied for children (mostly African American) attending Head Start. Initial analyses showed that children with reciprocated friends had higher social competence scores than children without reciprocated friends. Correlations suggested that the number of reciprocated friendships was associated with the social competence indicators studied here. Beyond the cost of having no reciprocated friends, having nonreciprocated friendships was not a liability. Cross-time analyses suggested differing patterns of relations for boys and girls. Having versus not having a reciprocated friend was unstable across time, because there was a trend toward participating in reciprocated friendships from 3 to 4 years of age (most older children had at least 1 reciprocated friend). For girls there was a positive relation between the number of reciprocated friendships at Time 1 and at Time 2. No benefit (in terms of social competence) was found for children making the transition from 1 classroom to the next with a friend.

Dyadic Analyses of Friendship in a Sample of Preschool‐Age Children Attending Head Start: Correspondence between Measures and Implications for Social Competence

Friendships among a large sample of preschool-age children (N = 471) attending Head Start were assessed. Based on sociometric data, friendship dyads were identified as reciprocated (mutual choice) or nonreciprocated (unilateral choice). Dyads were further classified with respect to gender composition as either same- or mixed-gender dyads. Older children were more likely to participate in a reciprocated friendship than were younger children and reciprocated dyads were more likely to be same-gender than were nonreciprocated dyads. Analyses of interaction between dyad partners revealed that reciprocated friends interacted more frequently across all categories of interaction coded and looked at each other more frequently than did members of nonreciprocated dyads. For the positive interaction subscore, the friendship status effect was modified by a significant interaction with gender composition such that significant effects of friendship status were obtained only for same-gender dyads. Additional analyses indicated that the average social competence level was greater for reciprocated dyads than for nonreciprocated dyads. The findings suggest that reciprocated friendships are meaningful for preschool-age children and may serve as special socialization contexts in which the repertoire of behavior can be exercised and perhaps improved. They also highlight the salience of same-gender friendships in the preschool classroom.

Maternal attachment script representations: longitudinal stability and associations with stylistic features of maternal narratives.

Abstract To evaluate the temporal stability of maternal attachment representations obtained using a word-prompt task, a sample of mothers (N = 55) was assessed on two occasions, 12 – 15 months apart. Each mother responded to six word-prompt sets on each assessment occasion (4 word-prompt sets were designed to prime secure base themes, 2 word-prompt sets were designed to prime different themes), and the resulting stories were scored in terms of the presence and quality of the secure base scripts evident in each story. The story scriptedness scores (average across four stories) were internally consistent at each assessment (alphas >.85) and the mean difference in scores was not significant across assessments. The cross-time correlation for the composites (aggregates of scores at each age) was positive and significant, r(53) = .54. Other aspects of maternal stories were also stable (e.g., number of words used, number of sentences per story, use of words from the prompt list). Controlling for stable stylistic features of the stories did not reduce the magnitude of association for scriptedness scores across time. These results suggest that the presence and quality of secure base scripts is a stable aspect of maternal representations of attachment and that the word-prompt task is useful for prompting the script in narrative production.

Are happy children socially successful? Testing a central premise of positive psychology in a sample of preschool children

Current developmental studies of affect/emotion emphasize knowledge about and regulation of affective states and/or behaviors. Expressiveness per se is rarely studied independently from knowledge and/or regulation; consequently, recent studies of young childrens affect do not interface with the literature from positive psychology indicating that the chronic experience of positive affect predicts a range of desirable life outcomes. We assessed affect expressiveness for 377 preschool children in dyadic peer play. Correlation indicated that dyadic positive affect was associated with peer acceptance, visual attention received from peers, rate of initiating positive interactions, and classroom adjustment from teachers’ ratings and that negative affect was associated (negatively) with peer acceptance. Negative affect was also positively associated with teacher-rated dysregulation. Subsequent multi-level regressions showed that positive and negative affect uniquely predicted most of their respective correlates when entered together as Level-1 predictors with dysregulation.

Attachment representations, sleep quality and adaptive functioning in preschool age children

Both the attachment system and sleep are considered to be important biopsychosocial regulators of development and of adaptive functioning in children, and there is a substantial literature suggesting that the two systems may be mutually influencing. To date, however, the bulk of research attempting to link these systems has focused on infancy and the results of empirical studies are mixed. Thirty-nine preschool children participated in this study (valid sleep data for 34 cases). Attachment representations were assessed using the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT) and sleep was assessed using objective (i.e., actigraphy) measures. Analyses revealed that the coherence of child narratives and security scored from the ASCT were related to sleep quality indices (e.g., Sleep Activity, Wake Minutes after Sleep Onset, Sleep Efficiency). Additional analyses examined external correlates of attachment representations and tested possible interactions of attachment and sleep. No significant mediated interactions across attachment and sleep domains were found. Although the direction of effects cannot be determined, the results suggest that parent–child relationship and sleep organization are intertwined for preschool age children and the joint effects of these biopsychosocial regulators should be studied further.

Stability and change in daytime and nighttime sleep in children attending daycare

Many young children experience insufficient or poor quality sleep, which may have implications for adjustment and cognitive performance. This study tested group-level changes and rank-order stability in both daytime and nighttime sleep parameters over a six-month period, from fall to spring, among children receiving high-quality, center-based daycare. A total of 68 preschoolers (54% girls; M age = 3.80 years, SD = .68) participated. Sleep was assessed via actigraphy for seven days and nights; sleep duration (actual sleep minutes) and quality parameters were derived. Analyses of group-level changes indicated that children’s daytime and nighttime sleep duration did not change significantly from fall to spring. Nighttime sleep quality showed significant improvement, however, such that children had higher sleep efficiency in the spring than in the fall. Rank-order stability in both nighttime and daytime measures of sleep duration and quality was moderate, and stability in daytime sleep quality was low. Results add to a sparse literature examining stability in sleep parameters in young children using actigraphy.