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Peer Relations and the Understanding of Faux Pas: Longitudinal Evidence for Bidirectional Associations
Author(s) -
Banerjee Robin,
Watling Dawn,
Caputi Marcella
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01669.x
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , peer relations , peer group , longitudinal study , context (archaeology) , social relation , social psychology , paleontology , statistics , mathematics , biology
Research connecting children’s understanding of mental states to their peer relations at school remains scarce. Previous work by the authors demonstrated that children’s 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.