No abstract

Although studies document that young children perceive themselves in psychologically-relevant ways, much remains to be understood about early self-concept development and how it is influenced by relational experience. This longitudinal study examines stability and change in the self-understanding of preschoolers, and its relation to children's security of attachment and maternal negative affect. Thirty-three children were studied with their mothers at ages 4 and 5; children's self-perceptions, attachment security, and maternal negative affect were assessed at each age. Secure attachment at 4 years old was associated with more positive self-concept at 5 years old (even with security at age 5 controlled), and secure children were more consistent in their self-perceptions over time. Maternal negative affect was associated with children's more negative self-perceptions and less consistent self-perceptions over time. Overall, these findings confirm the significance of early relational influences in how young children perceive themselves as psychological beings, particularly the importance of attachment security.

Given the multidimensional nature of both perspective taking and prosocial behaviors, the authors advance an information processing position that attending to characteristics of tasks used to assess these constructs will clarify the nature of their associations. A meta-analysis is presented to address the task specificity hypothesis such that perspective taking and prosocial behavior are more strongly related with greater similarity in the task dimensions of emotionality, target protagonist, and context specificity. Results support this hypothesis; the magnitude of relations between perspective taking and prosocial behavior was independently predicted by each dimension, and higher task similarity on two dimensions substantially increased explained variance. Age differences in links between perspective taking and prosocial behavior were also found suggesting that effects are strongest in middle-childhood and adolescence. Implications are discussed for the study of social cognitions and moral behaviors.

We rely on the support of other people in everyday experience, and considerable research documents the association of social support with psychological well‐being and coping with stress. Yet enlisting social support to address the needs of at‐risk children and families is challenging and often unsuccessful. We explore why this is so, discuss the specific characteristics of social support for children and youth, and profile the lessons of promising intervention strategies. In this chapter, we: (a) offer a definition and conceptualization of social support and its multiple functions; (b) discuss social support as it prevents stress and buffers stress; (c) consider the complex, bidirectional association between social support and stress; (d) examine social support in relation to the social relationships and social networks of children and their parents; (e) discuss cultural influences; and (f) profile research related to social support and the origins, maintenance, prevention, and treatment of developmental psychopathology.

Parent–child reminiscing conversations in early childhood have received theoretical attention as a forum for children's self‐concept development, but this has been little addressed in empirical work. This study examines associations between emotion reminiscing and children's self‐concepts and, building from the reminiscing and personality development literatures, also explores the role of children's coping. Sixty 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children and their mothers completed reminiscing conversations about events in which the child had experienced negative emotion, children completed an age‐appropriate assessment of their self‐concept, and mothers and teachers reported on children's coping strategies. Children's self‐perceived timidity was associated with their explanations for negative emotions during reminiscing. Children's self‐perceived negative affect was associated with fewer emotion resolutions during reminiscing, and with distinctive patterns of coping. Both reminiscing and coping made unique contributions to children's self‐concepts, and findings also suggest that coping may in some contexts indirectly connect reminiscing with self‐concept. These findings suggest that reminiscing conversations both reflect children's characteristics and provide a context for learning about their characteristics, along with strategies for emotion management. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.