A growing literature has focused on preschool as an important time for children’s emotional and social development. The ways in which preschoolers engage in social behaviors and their temperament traits are expressed may vary across the school year, but these associations have traditionally been explored through parent or teacher report. Few studies have utilized a short-term longitudinal, observational approach to understand how these constructs function uniquely and how they intersect. The current study seeks to examine how temperament traits and social behavior manifest and relate to one another in a classroom setting as well as over time, while also examining the role of age and sex. Fifty-three children were observed in play and instruction situations in their university-affiliated preschool classroom, where teams of coders rated children’s temperament traits and social interactions over the course of one school year. Children’s interaction partners were also recorded to determine friendship ties between children. Results confirmed a three-factor higher-order temperament trait structure found in past literature and found relations among temperament traits, social behavior, age, and sex. Lending support for preschool effectiveness, effortful control rose steadily across the school year in both classrooms. In addition, temperament traits were able to predict subsequent social behaviors more often than social behaviors predicted subsequent temperament traits, indicating a reciprocal influence but emphasizing the importance of children’s traits.
Read
