Social perception in children

Jealousy results from the fear of loss of an important relationship partner or his/her
exclusive attention (Neu, 1980; Tov-Ruach, 1980). Infants are dependant on their
caregivers for basic needs and emotional support. Therefore, if an infant perceives that a
rival threatens the parent-child dyad relationship, it is possible that the infant will respond
in a jealous manner just as adults do when their important relationships are threatened .
Although infants have limited emotional understanding, Palmer and Palmer (2002)
suggest that jealousy evolved out of other resource-protecting drives. Because parental
care is a valuable resource, supporting survival, infants may have at least precursory
jealousy capabilities. Research on infant jealousy is minimal however, Hart and
Carrington (2002) characterized approach responses to the loss of maternal attention to a
life-like doll as jealousy. The purpose ofthe current repeated-measures research design is
to provide a conceptual replication of previous infant jealousy research. Whether infant jealousy responses are moderated by individuals approach or withdrawal tendencies, is
still to be determined and is another focus of the current research. Temperamental
characteristics may influence emotional responses and asymmetrical frontal brain activity
is associated with individual differences in emotional responding (see Coan & Allen,
2004 for a review). Therefore baseline electroencephalography (EEG) is collected in the
current research followed by subjecting 15 infants (mean age = 12.87 months) to two
maternal ignoring conditions, one involving the mother attending to a social object (lifelike
doll) and a control condition in which the mother attends to a non-social object
(book). Results show that infants respond differentially to the two conditions with
increased approach behaviors, arousal, and negative affect in the doll condition. The
infants' responses in the social-object condition are identified as jealousy, suggesting that
infants are capable of at least some complex emotional experiences.
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This study explored the social-cognitive functioning of aggressive and victimized elementary school children. Fourth- through seventh-grade male and female children (mean age 11.8 years) responded to four self-report questionnaires which assessed: (a) hostile attributional bias; (b) outcome expectancies for aggressive behavior; (c) outcome values for aggressive behavior; and (d) self-perceived efficacy for regulating three states of emotional arousal (anger, fear, and euphoria). Aggressive children, compared to nonaggressive children, expected aggression to result in control over their victims, did not expect retaliation from their victims, and did not care whether their victims tried to retaliate or not. Victimized children were more likely to expect retaliation for aggressing.

The stability of victimization (and of related variables, such as aggression and rejection) was explored over a two-year period. Subjects were 135 elementary school children (third through sixth graders) who were given the Victimization and Aggression Inventory (VAI) as well as a sociometric status measure. Two years later the measures were readministered. All three variables (victimization, aggression, and rejection) were found to be moderately stable over the two-year period, but stability varied with measure and with cohort (grade of child at first testing). Aggression was stable for all four cohorts whereas victimization was stable only for the older cohorts. Partial correlations revealed that the stability of victimization, but not aggression, was dependent to a large degree on children's rejection scores. Hierarchical regression analyses yielded evidence consistent with the hypothesis that rejection causes victimization.

It was hypothesized that victimized children are less able than other children to think of competent responses when in danger of being attacked by a peer. Two other factors hypothesized to influence the ability to generate competent responses were the subject's level of aggressiveness and the subject's sex. Subjects were 48 third through sixth graders. Children were read four scenarios describing provocative behavior toward them by a peer and asked to state all the things a child might do if the situation really happened. Results indicated that victim girls generated more incompetent responses than control girls (when controlled for redundancy), but victim status did not influence boy's data. Deficits were also found for high aggressive children and boys in their greater production (uncorrected for redundancies) of incompetent responses that were aggressive. It was concluded that victimized girls, but not boys may have cognitive deficits in response generation processes.

Mother-child interactions that might predict peer victimization for children during middle childhood were examined. 184 middle class boys and girls in the 4th through 7th grades participated in the study. Child report measures of 6 dimensions of maternal parenting style and 7 types of child coping during mother-child conflict were developed. These family variables were reduced to a smaller set of variables and related to peer reports of children's victimization by peers, internalizing problems with peers, and externalizing problems with peers. Results indicate that, for boys, maternal overprotectiveness is associated with peer victimization for boys who use fearful or submissive coping during mother-child conflicts. Maternal overprotectiveness also predicts boys' internalizing problems with peers. Moreover, boys' internalizing problems with peers mediate the relation between maternal overprotectiveness and peer victimization. For girls, maternal hostility is associated with peer victimization for girls who are physically weak, and maternal hostility predicts internalizing problems with peers. As is the case with boys, internalizing problems with peers mediate the link between maternal hostility and victimization by peers. For both boys and girls, maternal hostility predicted externalizing problems with peers. A theory that explains gender differences in relations between maternal behaviors and peer victimization was advanced.

Two studies were conducted in which children's (Grades 3--8) perceptions of classmates' academic performance, school affect, and behavioral conduct were examined in relation to achievement outcomes as measured by standardized achievement test scores in language, mathematics, and science, and school grades in English, mathematics, and science. Study 1 was a longitudinal design and the main research question addressed was whether the way a child's peers perceive him or her with respect to school characteristics would be related to children's academic outcomes concurrently, and one year later. Support was found for several hypotheses advanced. Peers' perceptions were related to children's concurrent achievement test scores and school grades. Peers' perceptions were also generally predictive of the following year's school grades. Domain differences were found in that peers' perceptions of academic performance were more strongly predictive than affect or conduct domain judgments. Peers' perceptions were also more strongly related to school grades than to achievement test scores. The second study continued the examination of peers' perceptions with additional perceptions measured from children's self-judgments and teachers' ratings. In Study 2, the main question explored was whether peers' perceptions of children's academic qualities would be predictive of children's concurrent achievement outcomes beyond children's self-perceptions and teachers' perceptions. Results showed that even after controlling for both self and teacher judgments, peers' perceptions were strongly related to all school grades. Theoretical and practical implications of the research findings were discussed and suggestions for future research were offered.

Jealousy is a response to a situation in which a person feels a combination of different emotions, such as love, anger, sadness and fear when an affectionate interaction is happening between a loved one and someone else. This paper discusses the definition and onset of infant jealousy, the physiological basis of jealousy, whether maternal factors play a role, as well as studies on jealousy and EEG patterns. It has been argued that infants, as young as six-months-old display jealous-like behaviors. During jealousy evocation conditions, infants demonstrate negative emotions such as protesting or crying, diminished distancing, and heightened gaze toward their mother during maternal inattention. Approach/withdrawal behaviors and electroencephalography (EEG) activation were studied in the context of an infant jealousy paradigm. In this investigation, 45 mother-infants dyads were exposed to a social versus non-social condition during maternal inattention. During the social condition, infants demonstrated increased approach-style gaze and reach and negative affect. EEG was collected during all conditions on a subsample of 15 infants and in agreement with adult jealousy literature (Harmon-Jones, Peterson, & Harris, 2009), infants displayed left midfrontal EEG asymmetry, and displayed more approach motivations during the social doll condition indicative of jealousy approach motivations.