Although a number of social--cognitive and contextual correlates of defending against bullying have been identified, research on the personality traits associated with defending have yielded weak and inconsistent results. The current study provided a novel examination as to whether a tendency toward social withdrawal is associated with less…

Improved survival rates of pediatric oncology patients give them the opportunity to return to school. This can present a significant challenge, as returning students often become vulnerable to peer rejection. The objective of this double-arm descriptive study was to establish a framework from which to optimize a school reintegration intervention…

In this study, we sought to create and validate a brief measure to assess students' perceptions of kindness in school. Participants included 1,753 students in Grades 4 to 8 attending public schools in a large school district in southern British Columbia. The School Kindness Scale (SKS) demonstrated a unidimensional factor structure and adequate…

A growing body of literature indicates that childhood emotion regulation predicts later success with peers, yet little is known about the processes through which this association occurs. The current study examined mechanisms through which emotion regulation was associated with later peer acceptance and peer rejection, controlling for earlier…

The purpose of this study was to identify and validate subtypes of peer status by integrating preference and popularity into a single framework. Person-oriented analyses were performed among 3,630 children and adolescents of different cohorts in primary and secondary education. In the young age groups (Grade 3/4 to Grade 7), three clusters were…

Despite its importance in social development, social understanding has hardly been studied in high-ability children. This study explores differences in social understanding between children in high-ability and regular classrooms, specifically theory of mind (ToM) and perception accuracy, as well as associations between individual characteristics…

This study investigated whether perceived popularity mediates and/or moderates the association between agentic goals and bullying, and whether sociometric popularity mediates and/or moderates the association between communal goals and bullying. Age and gender differences were also examined. Participants were 276 fourth and fifth graders (middle…

A study of acculturative stress in children who served as language brokers surveyed 36 bilingual Latino fifth graders from a Southern California elementary school. The least acculturated children reported higher frequencies of language brokering and greater discomfort in doing so. High levels of acculturative stress were associated with increased…

Peer relationships represent a strong determinant in the development of prosocial behavior. This study compared the relationship of two sociometric methods (a peer nomination and a peer assessment technique) with parent and teacher ratings of social skills and problem behaviors. A peer nomination technique was used to determine the social status…

This study examined social and personal concomitants of exceptional academic capability, specifically self-concept, peer acceptance, and attitude toward school, in the context of integrated or self-contained classrooms. The sample consisted of 354 gifted Ontario students from Grades 5, 8, and 10 (150 in self-contained classrooms and 204 in…

Students' relationships with peers is fundamental to their mental health. A 3-month study presented here investigated the nature and frequency of students' self-reported recess problems and the degree to which these were concomitant with two often-used measures of children's social competence: peer acceptance and mutual friendships. Seven specific…

This study examined whether children's psychosocial self-evaluations mediated the relationship between general academic self-concept and self-reported depression. Self-evaluations in three psychosocial domains were assessed: General self-worth, intellectual ability, and social acceptance. Results indicated three significant findings. First, a…

The developmental significance of children's academic reputation among peers was examined in a longitudinal study of 400 children in Grades 3, 4, and 5. In the fall of Year 1, teachers rated children's academic skills and behavior, and peers provided nominations describing classmates' academic skills, social acceptance versus rejection, and…