Pre-school children's aggressive and pro-social behaviours in stressful situations

Abstract

The aim of our research was to investigate social and emotional skills that determine pre-schoolers' aggressive and pro-social behaviours in stressful situations. The sample of the empirical study consisted of 119 (36-48, 49-60 and 61-72 months) Hungarian children from six pre-schools. Instruments that were used: Coping strategy self-report and teacher-report questionnaires as well as hypothetical social situations interviews with puppets. The statistical analysis of pre-school teachers' questionnaires showed that verbal and physical aggression as coping strategies were used in a significantly higher proportion (p , 0.05) by 61-72-month-old children than by the younger age groups. In the oldest age group, boys were rated significantly more aggressive than girls (p , 0.05). However, significant age or gender effects could not be demonstrated on pro-social behaviour. Self-report questionnaires have not yielded any significant results concerning age and gender differences in either studied dimension. Hypothetical social situations resulted in significantly less-aggressive responses by 36-48-month-old children than by the two other age groups (p , 0.05). Data obtained by self-report and teacher-report questionnaires on coping strategies and pro-social behaviour showed moderate correlations (r ¼ 0.325-0.478).

Cool and hot executive function as predictors of aggression in early childhood: Differentiating between the function and form of aggression

“…Prosocial and aggressive behaviour may reflect normative ways of dealing with peer conflict. In conflict situations, including being teased by a peer or social exclusion, children aged 4–6 years engaged in more aggressive (e.g., hitting) and prosocial (e.g., negotiation) strategies than 3‐year‐old children (Zsolnai, Lesznyák, & Kasik, ). Furthermore, prosocial behaviour has been found to moderate the relationship between other cognitive abilities (theory of mind) at 5 years of age and relational aggression at 6 years of age (Renouf et al ., ).…”

Cross Cultural Gender Differences in Social-emotional Competence of Young Children: Comparisons with Brazil, China, South Korea, and the United States

“…In one preschool study, Chen and colleagues [28] found few gender differences on behavioral inhibition in Chinese and Canadian toddlers, suggesting that socialization in early childhood might play an essential role in gender differences in social-emotional disabilities that surface in later childhood. Furthermore, international studies addressing gender differences in young children's social-emotional competence have focused most often on a single cultural group or region [29][30][31][32][33][34], rather than comparisons across cultures.…”

Online testing of Hungarian children's prosocial behavior

“…Hungarian studies found a significant correlation between social behavior and parents' level of education in preschool children and junior grade students, 1 and the correlation was found to be the strongest for mothers' education (e.g., Józsa, 2004;Zsolnai & Józsa, 2003;Zsolnai et al, 2012). These results suggest that educational attainment is a major factor in parenting style, which in turn has an effect on children's social behavior.…”

“…Our previous studies of social competence used exclusively paper-based measurement tools (e.g., Kasik & Tóth, 2011;Zsolnai, Lesznyák, & Kasik, 2012), but now for the first time our data were collected online.…”