Robin Banerjee

Individual Differences in Children's Materialism: The Role of Peer Relations:

Associations between materialism and peer relations are likely to exist in elementary school children but have not been studied previously. The first two studies introduce a new Perceived Peer Group Pressures (PPGP) Scale suitable for this age group, demonstrating that perceived pressure regarding peer culture (norms for behavioral, attitudinal, and material characteristics) can be reliably measured and that it is connected to childrens responses to hypothetical peer pressure vignettes. Studies 3 and 4 evaluate the main theoretical model of associations between peer relations and materialism. Study 3 supports the hypothesis that peer rejection is related to higher perceived peer culture pressure, which in turn is associated with greater materialism. Study 4 confirms that the endorsement of social motives for materialism mediates the relationship between perceived peer pressure and materialism.

Experimental modification of interpretation bias in socially anxious children: Changes in interpretation, anticipated interpersonal anxiety, and social anxiety symptoms

We report on an experimental manipulation of interpretation bias in socially anxious youths. A non-clinical sample of 10-11-year-olds selected for high social anxiety was trained over three sessions to endorse benign rather than negative interpretations of potentially threatening social scenarios. This group was subsequently less likely to endorse negative interpretations of new ambiguous social situations than children in a test-retest condition. Children who received interpretation training also showed reduced trait social anxiety and reported significantly less anxiety about an anticipated interpersonal encounter, compared with the control group.

The verbal threat information pathway to fear in children: the longitudinal effects on fear cognitions and the immediate effects on avoidance behavior

Verbal information has long been assumed to be an indirect pathway to fear. Children (aged 6-8 or 12-13 years) were exposed to threat, positive, or no information about 3 novel animals to see the long-term impact on their fear cognitions and the immediate impact on avoidance behavior. Their directly (self-report) and indirectly (implicit association task) measured attitudes toward the animals changed congruent with the information provided, and the changes persisted up to 6 months later. Verbal threat information also induced behavioral avoidance of the animal. Younger children formed stronger animal- threat and animal-safe associations because of threat and positive verbal information than older children, but there were negligible age effects on self-reported fear beliefs and avoidance behaviors. These results support theories of fear acquisition that suppose that verbal information affects components of the fear emotion.

Peer relations and the understanding of faux pas: longitudinal evidence for bidirectional associations

Research connecting childrens understanding of mental states to their peer relations at school remains scarce. Previous work by the authors demonstrated that childrens understanding of mental states in the context of a faux pas--a social blunder involving unintentional insult--is associated with concurrent peer rejection. The present report describes a longitudinal follow-up investigation of 210 children from the original sample, aged 5-6 or 8-9 years at Time 1. The results support a bidirectional model suggesting that peer rejection may impair the acquisition of faux pas understanding, and also that, among older children, difficulties in understanding faux pas predict increased peer rejection. These findings highlight the important and complex associations between social understanding and peer relations during childhood.

The development of an understanding of modesty

Previous research has shown that childrens understanding of how others evaluate them improves during primary school. Modesty reflects a complex form of this understanding, since one must appreciate that a self-deprecating presentation of the self can lead to enhanced social evaluation. The present research examines the understanding of modesty in children aged between 6 and 10 years. In Expt 1, 179 children were asked to choose between modest and immodest responses to praise in hypothetical situations, and then to justify their choices. Children from age 8 onwards nor only showed a preference for the modest responses but also justified this preference in terms of the negative impact of immodesty on social evaluation. In Expt 2, 60 children judged modest and immodest responses, and also completed two social cognition tasks capping second-order mental-state reasoning. A teacher-assessed measure of self-monitoring was also administered. As in the first experiment, children from age 8 viewed modest responses more positively than immodest responses. Furthermore, attitudes towards modesty were associated with individual differences in self-monitoring and social cognition,such that children with greater sensitivity to the interpersonal dynamics of social situations were more likely than others to rate modest responses positively. Implications for understanding childrens social behaviour are discussed.

Promoting theory of mind during middle childhood: A training program

Evidence that conversations about the mind foster improvements in theory of mind (ToM) is growing, but their efficacy in typically developing school-aged children has yet to be demonstrated. To address this gap, we designed a conversation-based training program for 9- and 10-year-olds and measured its effectiveness by pre- and post-test comparisons of performance on age-appropriate ToM tasks for two groups (matched at pre-test for gender, age, socioeconomic background, verbal ability, reading comprehension, executive functions, and ToM) who were assigned to either the intervention condition (n=45) or an active control condition (n=46). The intervention group showed significantly greater gains in ToM than the control group; this contrast was stable over 2 months, and (in a subsample) the improvement in ToM was independent of any changes in executive functions. Implications for the role of conversations about the mind in childrens mental state reasoning are discussed.

Social Anxiety and Self-Evaluation of Social Performance in a Nonclinical Sample of Children

In an investigation of socially anxious childrens social behavior and self-evaluation, 28 high socially anxious and 28 low socially anxious children, ages 11 to 13 years, appraised their performance before and after participating in a role-play task. Half of the children were given video feedback prior to giving their posttask self-evaluations. High socially anxious children anticipated poorer performance on the role-play task, and some group differences in observed social performance were evident. Self-evaluations from video feedback only improved for the high socially anxious children who displayed more eye contact, gave longer verbal responses, and used more constructive verbal strategies in the role-play scenarios.

Boys will be Boys: The Effect of Social Evaluation Concerns on Gender‐Typing

Previous research has demonstrated that young children hold strong gender stereotypes for activities and toy, preferences. Some researchers have argued that this rigid gender-typing displayed by young children is associated with peer reinforcement for stereotypical behaviour and punishment of counterstereotypical behaviour. The present study tests the hypothesis that the gender-typing displayed by young children is at least in part an active self-presentational effort to win positive evaluation from peers. Sixty-four children aged between 4 and 9 years described themselves in terms of their activity and toy preferences, once when alone and once when in front of a group of same-sex peers. They also completed a task measuring the rigidity of their gender stereotypes. It was found using both group-bused and individual-based analyses that the children with the most rigid stereotypes-young boys-were more likely to present themselves as sex-typed in front of the peer audience than when alone. The older boys and the girls in all age groups tended to have less rigid stereotypes and their self-descriptions were in general not influenced by the presence of an audience. These results show that self-presentational concerns do influence childrens gender-typed behaviour; and that these concerns may vary with age and gender.

Interpretations and judgments regarding positive and negative social scenarios in childhood social anxiety

The present study extended our understanding of cognitive biases in childhood social anxiety. A non-clinical sample of 11-13-year olds completed social anxiety and depression scales and were presented with scenarios depicting positive and mildly negative social events. Social anxiety was associated with tendencies to interpret positive social events in a discounting fashion, to catastrophize in response to mildly negative social events, and to anticipate more negative emotional reactions to the negative events. Implications for understanding and treating social anxiety are discussed.

Brief Report : Self-Presentation of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The self-presentational behaviour of 43 6- to 12-year-old children with high functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) and normal intelligence and 43 matched comparisons was investigated. Children were prompted to describe themselves twice, first in a baseline condition and then in a condition where they were asked to convince others to select them for a desirable activity (self-promotion). Even after controlling for theory of mind skills, children with HFASD used fewer positive self-statements at baseline, and were less goal-directed during self-promotion than comparison children. Children with HFASD alter their self-presentation when seeking personal gain, but do this less strategically and convincingly than typically-developing children.