Social Interaction, Social Competence, andFriendship in Children

John Gottman, Jonni Gonso, and Brian Rasmussen

Indi(ma UniversUy

, JOHN; GONSO, JONNI; and RASMUSSEN, BRIAN. Soctal Interaction, Social Compe-tence, and Friendship in ChUdmn. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1975, 46, 709-718. The relation-ship betwe^i social skills, social interaction, and popularity was examined. The subjects were198 children in third and fourth grades in middle- and low-income schools. The relationshipsbetween number of friends, socioeconomic status, and grade level were studied in a 2 X 2 X 2factorial design with 2 sets of dependent measures: (1) social skills were ass^sed by anexperimenter testing each child individually on a set of tasks whidi included measures of theability to label emotions in facial expressions, knowledge of how to make friends, givinghelp, and role-taking ability; and (2) social interaction in the classroom was assessed using anaturalistic observational system. Popular and unpopular children differed in their knowl-edge of how to make friends and on the referential-communication task. In the classroom,popular children distributed and received more positive reinforcement than unpopular dhil-dren and spent less time daydreaming. Both grade and social class factors were significant.However, different pattems of results contributed to the main effect of friends and thegrade-level main effect. The importance of assessing social skills which are first validated byreference to a criterion such as sociometric position was noted.

There is a growing body of research onthe development of social-cognitive skills inchildren. Izard (1971) studied childien'sability to recognize and label emotions. _Anumber oj^ researchers using a wide variety oftasks have examined children's ability to cpm-niunicate accuralely t g . . a _ l ^ ^ (Asher &Farke 1975; Flavell, Botkin, Fiy, Wright, &Jarvis 1968; Glucksberg & Krauss 1967).Other lnvestigatgrs_haye assessed children'sability to take the role perspective of anotherperson on perceptual (PiffgetS Inhelder 1956)andjscjcial tasks (Feffer & Gourevitch 1960).One issue fevestigated in the present, |the covariation among these2j3il|eisntPrevidus Teseareft'lias typically examined agetrends on one type of task without assessingthe relationships among performances on dif-ferent tasks.

Another issue neglected in previous re-search is whether differences in social skillamong children are predictive of social suc-cess with peers. This is an important issue since

peer popularity is itself related to indices oflater mental health. Unpopular children aremore likely to be disproportionately repre-sented later in life in a community-wide psy-chiatric register (Cowen, Pederson, Babigan,Izzo, & Trost 1973); they are also more likelyto receive bad-conduct discharges from thearmed forces (Roff 1961). Kohn and Clausen(1955) reported that the propSfHon of socialisolates in adult manic depressives and schizo-phrenics was close to one-third, while in normalcontrol groups the proportion was close to zero.Manic depressives were as likely as schizo-phrenics to have been isolates. In a survey ofresearch on suicide and attempted suicide,Stengel (1971) concluded that "social isok:tion is the common denominatorof "^numberof ifactors correlated with a high suicide rate"(p. 28). Roff, Sells, and Golden (1972) re-cently studied a sample of 40,000 children in21 cities. Except for the lowest socioeconomicclass, the relationship was highly positive be-tween percentage delinquent and low peer-ac-ceptance scores taken 4 years earlier. It is

The authors wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the principals and staff of Fairviewand Rogers schools in Bloomington, Indiana and the help of Greg Brown, Robert Hatcher,Judy Jordan, Ellen Nakhnikian, Deborah Pizer, and Bart>ara Walker. Requests for reprintsshouldf be addr^sed to John M. Gottman, Department of Psychology, Indiana University,Bloomington, Indiana 47401.

iChild Development, 1975, 46, 709-718. © 197S by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. Allrights reserved.]

710 Child Developm^it

therefore important to study which socialskills relate to peer friendship ratings. Uaotti'fication of critical sIdlOb could be a &st step minterventions aimedt at faciKtating peer rela-

' tions in children.

An early study which related social be-havior to peer popularity was conducted byHirtup, Glazer, and Charlesworth (1967).TTiey observed ntirsery school children in theclassatx^m and categorized social behavior aspositiw or negative. The category of positivebehavior included giving attention and ap-proval, giving affection and personal accep-tance, submitting to another s wishes, andgiving things to another. Negative behaviorsinclua,ed noncompliance, interference, deroga-tion, and attack. Using a sociometric instru-ment in two nursery school classes, theseinvestigators found that positive behaviors dis-pensed to peers were related to acceptancescores in both classrooms. Negative behaviorsdispensed were related to rejection scores inone classroom but not in the other. J t is jnote-^o^*ty that a number of research studiesintervening with social isolates have usedtotal frequency of interaction as the majorcriterion in defining the isolate and as the de-pendent variable for assessing interventions(O'Connor 1969, 1972; Walker and Hops1973), with no reference to sociometric mea-sures. Furthermore, these studies have taughtsocial skills which were not tested empiricallyby studying the covariation of skills with peerratings. To test the validity of the dependent \measures used in these studies it would benecessary to study social interaction in con-junction with social skills and sociometric po-sition.

In a more recent study Rubin (1973)examined the relationship between social skillsand peer popularity. Kindergarten and second-, ifourth-, an(l sixth-grade children were testedon a variety of communication tasks. Popu-larity was assessed by asking each child tospecify his first, second, and third choices ofa classmate he "would like to spend his freeplaytime with." Rubin foimd two factors ina varimax solution of nine of his 12 variables.The first factor, which accounted for 56.9%of the total variance in the nine variables, "wasidentified as a *decentration factor"* (p. 108).Rubin used this term since three of his taskswere presumed to require shifting to the per-spective of a listener and one task measuredprivate self-speech on puzzle tasks. Popularity

loaded highly «m the second factor but kadedless than .30 on the first factor. ThereforeRubin concluded that decentration skills forma unidimensional factor which is independentof popularity.

Rubin's conclusion about the indepen-dence of popularity from (fecentration is notwarranted from his data. A varimax solutiondoes not guarantee that factors will be un-correlated. Therefore it may well be that popu-larity is in fact correlated with decentration.A principal-components solution will guaranteeorthogonality of components. We reanalyzedRubin's data by the method of principal com-ponents, using the correlation matrix of all 12of Rubin's variables. Our first component wassimilar to Rubin's decentration factor, and onthis factor a significant loading of popularitywas found. Furthermore, another report byRubin (1972) based on these data found thatthe partial correlation between performance onthe Clucksberg and Krauss (1967) referential-communication task and popularity, holdingIQ constant, was .58 (p < .01) for both kin-dergarten and second grade. These results areconsistent with our principal-components re-analysis of Rubin's data. Thus, there is reasonto believe that certain interpersonal skills maybe related to how well a child is liked by peers.

The present investigation examined thecovariation of (1) social skills assessed via aseries of tasks and (2) social behaviors as-sessed in the classroom, with friendshipchoices assessed by a sociometric measure.Third- and fourth-grade children were studied,since this age level appears to be one of transi-tion in the development of social abilities(Asher & Parke 1975; Elkind 1961; Feffer 1959;Feffer & Gourevitch 1960; Flavell et al. 1968;Glucksberg & Krauss 1967). Children camefrom two schools differing greatly in theeconomic and educational level of parents.This provided an assessment of possible socialclass correlates of the relationships betweenskills and peer popularity.

Method

SUBJECTS

Two schools were selected for this study,a Title I school in a lower-income section of amidwestem college town and a school in anupper-middle-income section of the town. Allthe children in two third- and two fourth-grade

classrooms in each school participated in thet d y ^ there were 198 Ss.

PROCEDURE

SocUjmetric MeasureChildren were asked to list their best

friends (any number). This item was used be-cause of findings of a pilot study in which asociometric measure had been administered toa third-grade classroom (N = 25) in a largemidwestern city. A number of possible phras-ings were piloted. Children were asked to list(1) their best friends (any number), (2)three children they would like to work with,(3) three children they would go to for help,(4) three children who "really listen to you,"(5) three children who "really like you," and(6) three people "you'd like to play with best."Variables 1-6 were the number of other chil-dren who chose the subject on items 1-6. Aprincipal-components analysis found threecomponents with eigenvalues greater than one.The first component accounted for 54.08% ofthe variance and related primarily to friend-ship (high-loading variables were 1, 4, 5, and6); the second component accounted for25.98% of the variance and was interpretedas related to perceived academic ability (high-loading variables were 2 and 3). This socio-metric item was administered in the presentexperiment, and variable 1 (best friends) wasused as the sociometric measure of friendship.

Social Skill Assessment1. Labeling emotions in facial expres-

sions.—tJsmg a set of photographs from Izard(19'7l), children were assessed in a match-to-sample task in which each child was asked tomatch each picture with index cards whichcontained the words "sad," "scared," "sur-prised," "disgusted," and "happy." A total-correct score was computed for each child.

2. Referential-cofnmunication accuracy.—Children played a word game in which theyhad to communicate to a listener one of twowords in a word pair (e.g., "house-car") bysending the listener an appropriate clue word(e.g., "home"). The italicized word in the

Gottman, Ck»^o, and Rasmussoai 711

pair is called tiie "referent,** and the other woidis called the "nonreferent** llie referent ap-peared with a nonreferent that was eitherdissimikr (e.g., "hou^-cai") or similar (e.g.,"hoiise-home"). Word paiK and instructionswere taken from Asher and Parke (1975), butthe scoring procedures differed. An adultjudge blind to hypotheses about developmentaldifferences scared the children's clue words onrelated and unrelated word-pair Usts, usingthree categories: good, bad, and not sure. Thetotal of "goods" on rekted and unrelated wordlists, respectively, became the child's twoscores on this task.

3. ^er^ective-taking tasks,—{a} Left-right 'percepiual decentering. To asseiss tMsskill two objects were placed between thesubject and the experimenter. The subject!,was asked which one was on his left, menwhich one was on his right. He was thenasked which one was on the experimenter'sright and which was on the experimenter'sleft. This was repeated with different objectsfor 12 pairs of objects (Elkind 1961). A total-correct score was calculated for each child.

b) Two-mountairL problem. The E satfacing the cHld and set up two stacks ofblocks, following a preset arrangement, toresemble mountain ranges. The child wasasked to pick from a set the appropriate indexcard with the three-dimensional perspectivedrawing which correctly displayed the moun-tain range" from the experimenter's perspec-tive. Four cards were designed, each of thethree incorrect choices refiecting a differenttransformation error following Gibson (1966):a perspectival transformation error; a right-left reversal error; and a picture of the blocksas the child actually saw them. The altemativechosen by the child was recorded. A child'sscore was either zero or one, depending onwhether his choice was correct.

4. JBUndfolded-listener tasks.— (a) Ob-stacle course. The child was asked to pretendthat he had to instruct a blindfolded puppet^through a miniature display of an obstaclecourse so that the puppet did not bump intoanything. The percentage of appropriate com-

1 Because of the illness of one observer, observational data were not completed for onemiddle-income fourth-grade dassroom, and the subjects for this classroom were dropped fromthe analysis.

2 The usual procedure of blindfolding the child first was not followed. In a pilot study a2 X 2 X 2 ANOVA (blindfold/no blindfold; third grade/fourth grade; male E/female E)revealed no significant main or interaction effects witn percentage of nonvisual cuat as thedependent variable.

712 Child Development

munication "units," that is, nonvisual cues,was assessed (see Flavell et al. 1968, p. 88).

b) Men-with-hats sequence. Five plastictoy men were shown to S in a fixed sequence.The child was asked to give instructions to animaginary blindfolded child about the propersequence of the five plastic toy men. The menwere of different colors and wore hats of dif-ferent colors and different textures (i.e., blackleather, blue corduroy, gold velvet, purplenetting, black and white fur). The child re-ceived a score ranging from zero to five basedon the number of texture cues.

5. Making friends.—The child was askedto pretend that the E was a new childin school with whom he wanted to makefriends. _]Responses were scored as follows:greeting, one point; asking for informatiori,two points; extending inclusion, three points;and giving information, four points. Thesecategories were used since a pilot study foundthat they covered all behaviors exhibited bythird- and fourth-grade children in a making-friends role play. Points were given differen-tially since the pilot study indicated thatchildren tended to proceed in a fixed sequence.Giving information was less likely than extend-ing inclusion, for example. Children in thepilot study followed the same sequence in therole play, though some children completedthe sequence while others did not, and thesequence was the same as that listed above.An example of information sought is "Wheredo you live?" or "How much is two and two?"Inclusion was usually a general offer ratherthan a specific offer to do something together(e.g., "Wanna come over to my house some-timeF*). Information given might be "I live nearthere" or "My favorite sport is basketball."

6. Qivinghslp-—Subjects were asked topretend that me E was another student in theirclass who needed help on three arithmeticproblem sets. Each problem set required thechild to switch teaching strategy. For the firstset counting on the fingers would do, but forthe second set it would not. For the third set,remainders had to be dealt with. The extentto which the child switched strategy was as-sessed. The child's response was scored zeroif he simply gave the answer, one point if hesupplied a strategy but not very clearly, andtwo points if a clear strategy was supplied; andan extra five points were given if the S shifted

strategy, since a shift in strategy was consid-ered to indicate a high leved'Of he%>ing skifl.

Clmsroom Behavior AssessmentObservers were assigned to classrooms.

They spent a few days leaming the names ofthe children in the classroom and then beganobserving by picking a child, observing himfor 10 6-second intervals (using a clipboardwith a 6-second light-emitting diode), and thenmoving to the next child on the list. Observa-tion was sampled from four situations: (1)lecture or demonstration situations (approxi-mately 90 observations per child); (2) seatwork (approximately 90 observations perchild); (3) small-group work, mixing, orclassroom work which involved free access toother children (approximately 90 observationsper child); and (4) gym, recess, or playperiods outside the classroom which involvedmore vigorous physical interaction (approxi-mately 40 observations per child). The follow-ing categories were used:^ {a) alone positive,(not interacting with other children or teacherbut listening to teacher when teacher is talk-ing, or doing assigned work); {b) alone andoff task (i.e., daydreaming or "tuned out";(c) dispensing positive reinforcer verbally(e.g., giving approval or verbally complyingwith a request); {d) dispensing positive rein-forcer nonverbally (e.g., giving something [atoken], giving affection, nonverbally comply-ing with a request); (e) dispensing negativereinforcer verbally; (/) dispensing negativereinforcer nonverbally; (g) receiving positivereinforcer verbally; {h) receiving negative re-inforcer verbally; (i) receiving positive rein-forcer nonverbally; (/) receiving negativereinforcer nonverbally; {k) entry behavior(asking for something, offering something);{I) peer interaction neutral (includes whis-pering); (m) teacher interaction: (1) teachergiving positive reinforcer; (2) teacher giv-ing negative reinforcer; (3) teacher neutral;and (n) child initiating interaction with teacher.The relative frequency of each category wastallied for each child, summing over all foursituations.

Observers were first trained in a pilotschool until an acceptable interobserver agree-ment of 85% was reached. Interobserveragreement was calculated as the total numberof intervals for which agreement occurreddivided by the total number of intervals ofobservation. An interobserver agreement of

A copy of the training manual for dassroom observers will be mailed on request.

85% was maintained throughout the study.Observers began observing in the Title Ischool and moved to the other school afterapproximately 350 observations (35 minutes)per subject, crossing grade level when switch-ing schools. One observer was used through-out the study for weekly random spot reli-ability checks only, and another observer alsofunctioned exclusively as a reliability checker,making reliability checks once a week at ran-dom unannounced times for each observer.

Results

To assess the relationships among socialskill variables, classroom interaction variables,and friendship, two 2 X 2 X 2 factorial mul-tivariate analyses of variance were performed,with two levels of social class, two levels ofgrade (third and fourth), and a median spliton the number of friendship choices received.The low-friends group received zero to fivechoices, with a mean of 2.82 friends, andthe high-friends group received six or morechoices, with a mean of 7.48 friends. Becausesome cells of the design had no variance onsome dependent variables, variable scores weresummed as follows. In the social skills tasksscores on the left-right and two-mountainproblems were summed and called "perceptualdecentering"; scores on the obstacle-courseand men-with-hats tasks were summed andcalled "blindfolded listener." In the classroomobservations entry and neutral interactionscores were summed and called "neutral in-teraction"; positive verbal and positive non-verbal reinforcements distributed were summedand called "distributes positive." Similarly,verbal and nonverbal behaviors were summedfor "distributes negative," "receives positive,"and "receives negative." Teacher-positive,teacher-negative, and teacher-neutral interac-tions were summed and called "receives atten-

Gottman, Gonso, and Rasmussen 713

tion from teacher.'* To control for differencesin activity level among children, the propor-tion of positive to total reinforcement distrib-uted was calculated.

SOCIAL SKILL VARIABLES

Using a multivariate analysis of varianceof social skills with WiUcs's X criterion, a sig-nificant main effect was obtained for friends,F(7,185) = 2.41, p < .022. No significantinteraction effects were obtained for gradelevel, social class, and the friends factor. Table1 summarizes the univariate F tests for eachsocial skill variable. High-friends children re-ceived significantly higher scores on the unre-lated-word-pairs task and the knowledgerof-making-friends role play than did low-friendschildren.

There was a significant grade-level maineffect, F (7,185) = 2.96, p < .006. However,the univariate F tests revealed a pattem dif-ferent from that for the friends main effect.Grade-level differences were found, with fourthgraders performing better than third graderson identifying affect in facial expressions, onthe related-word-pair task, on perceptual de-centering, on the blindfolded-listener task,and on knowledge of giving help.

As expected, there was a significant socialclass effect, F(7,185) = 12.74, p < .001.Children in the middle-income school per-formed better on all tasks than those in thelower-income school. There was also a signif-icant social class X grade level interaction,F(7,185) = 2.70, p < .011. There were twosignificant univariate social class X grade levelinteractions. Lower-income children increasedand middle-inconie rcHil&en idecreiase^ inknowledge of making friends from third tofourth grade. Table 2 presents means and

TABLE 1

UNIVARIATE F TESTS FOR SOCIAL SKILL VARIABLES FOR EFFECTS SIGNIFICANT USING WILKS'S I CRITERION

FRIENDS

SKILL F p

Facial expressions 0.98Related word pair 0.22Unrelated word pair 10.20 .002Perceptual decentering 2.26Blindfolded listener l.SOFriend making S.33 .022Help giving 0.02

NOTE.—df = 1,191. Empty cells indicate nonsignificance.

GRADE ( G ) SES (S) S X G

F

2.584.360.993.81

12.610.472.89

P

.038

.053

.001

.091

F

19.7815.1613.6020.0244.1911.4917.37

P

.001

.001

.001

.001

.001

.001

.001

F

4.931.292.460.871.556.410.35

P

.028. • •

.118. • .

• . •

.012

714 Child

TABLE 2

MEAKS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR SOCIAI, SKUX VARIABLES

LOWER-INCOME SCHOOL MIDDUE-INCOME SCHOOL

SOCIAL SKILL

Facial expressions:1SD

Related word pair:JPSD

Unrelated word pair:

SD ...............

Perceptual decentering:jfSD

Blindfolded listener:1SD

Friend making:ISD

Help giving:

SD.............V.

Third

LowFriends

14.69(2.09)

1.81(1.09)

8.09(1.40)

6.97(2.66)

83.28(66.54)

3.16(1.53)

2.44(3.51)

Grade

HighFriends

15.32(2.04)

2.48(1.24)

9.00(1.16)

8.55(2.39)

84.19(55.87)

3.77(2.14)

1.94(2.61)

Fourth

LowFriends

14.78(2.92)

2.38(1.67)

8.19(1.20)

8.43(2.90)

99.73(61.14)

4.00(1.76)

2.89(3.90)

Grade

HighFriends

14.92(1.62)

2.17(1.40)

9.08(0.90)

8.92(1.62)

117.08(72.20)

4.67(2.96)

2.67(3.34)

Third

LowFriends

15.86(1.70)

2.90(1.56)

9.26(0.64)

9.40(2.50)

126.40(57.23)

4.50(2.33)

3.68(3.26)

Grade

HighFriends

15.74(2.00)

2.46(0.80)

9.05(0.84)

9.11(2.99)

139.55(54.13)

5.86(3.20)

4.55(4.27)

Fourth

Ix)WFriends

17.25(1.92)

3.50(1.88)

8.55(1.10)

10.35(2.43)

169.05(45.55)

4.15(0.67)

5.05(0.69)

Grade

HighFriends

17.00(1.16)

3.71(2.56)

9.29(0.76)

8.86(3.13)

185.71(37.80)

4.14(0.90)

5.14(0.38)

standard deviations for the social skill vari-ables.

CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR VARIABLES

Using multivariate analysis of variance ofthe classroom interaction variables, a margin-ally significant main effect was obtained forfriends, F(10,182) = 1.79, p < .066. Table3 presents the univariate F ratios for each

classroom interaction variable. High-friendschildren were oflF task (daydreaming insteadof attending or working) less and distributedand received more positive reinforcement thanlow-friends children. There was also a signif-icant friends X grade level interaction for theclassroom variables, F( 10,182) = 2.26, p <.016. Although high-friends children were oflFtask less and received more positive reinforce-

TABLE 3

UNIVARIATE F TESTS FOR CLASSROOM INTERACTION VARIABLES FOR EFFECTSSIGNIFICANT USING WILKS'S X CRITERION

FRIENDS ( F ) GRADE ( G )

VARIABLE F p

Alone on task 0.52Alone off task 7.44 .007Neutral interaction 2.26Distributes positive 2.87 .092Distributes negative 0.17Receives positive 4.90 .028Receives negative 2.04Initiates to teacher 0.14Receives attention from teacher . . . 0.60Proportion positive of total 1.81

NotE.—(// = 1,191. Empty celb indicate nonsiipificance.

SES (S) S X G F X G

F

5.200.492.332.05

21.1310.390.010.540.321.27

P.024

.001

.001

F

15.132.212.028.468.891.00

11.744.776.625.30

P

.001

.004

.003• • *

.001

.030

.011

.022

F

104.543.56

130.5140.2050.5751.890.460.523.a)1.52

P.001.061.001.001.001.001

• • •

• • •

.053

F p

0.17 . . .6.21 .0140.31 . . .1.37 . . .1.16 . . .3.89 .0500.01 . . .0.02 . . .0.36 . . .1.17 . . .

ment, the gap decreased for off-task behaviorand widened for positive reinforcement re-ceived from tihird to fourtfi grade.

There was a significant grade-level mainF( 10,182) « 8.73, p < .001, for the

social interaction variables. Fourth graderswere on task more, distributed more negativereinforcement, and received morepositive re-inforcement than third graders. There was asignificant social class main effect, F( 10,182)= 5.71, p < .001. Middle-income childrenwere on task more, distributed more positivereinforcement, distributed and received lessnegative reinforcement, had a higher propor-tion of positive to total interaction, and inter-acted with the teacher (initiated and received)less than lower-income children.

Gottman, Ckinso, and R a s m u s ^ 715

There was a si^tiificant social class Xgrade level interactitm, F( 10,182) ~ 27.13, p< .001; from third to fourth grade, low-incomechildren increased the time they spent bothon and off task and interacdng with theteacher and distributing negative reinforce-ment, while middle-intx)me cmldren decreasedon tiiese variables from third to fourth grade.Middle-income children increased from thirdto fourth grade on neutral interaction and ondistributing and receiving positive reinforce-ment, whereas low-income children decreasedon these variables. Table 4 presents means andstandard deviations for the classroom behaviorvariables.

To study differences in the relationshipbetween verbal and nonverbal reinforcement

TABLE 4

MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR VARIABLES

VARIABLE

Alone on task:XSD

Alone off task:XSD

Neutral interaction:JTSD

Distributes positive:

SD

Distributes negative:XSD

Receives positive:

SD

Receives negative:XSD

Initiates to teacher:XSD

Receives attention fromteacher:r

SD

Proportion positive of total:

SD

LOWER-INCOME SCHOOL

Third

LowFriends

48.11(21.99)

7.83(6.28)

28 07(12.58)

9.87(8.46)

0.08(0.17)

2 09(2.10)

0.46(1.17)

0 97(0.59)

1.76(1.21)

0.75(0.44)

Grade

HighFriends

46.41(20.62)

4 06(3.96)

32.21(13.09)

10.10(8.11)

0.13(0.24)

3.00(3.18)

0.24(0.31)

1 20(0.94)

1.90(1.52)

0.74(0.45)

Fourth

LowFriends

74.83(14.41)

6.84(6.56)

10.22(13.64)

1.99(1.93)

0.69(0.73)

1.46(1.25)

0.44(0.44)

108(0.92)

1.78(1.47)

0.68(0.48)

Grade

HighFriends

70.75(14.84)

8.64(7.76)

11.14(8.75)

1.96(0.93)

0.77(0.58)

1.68(0.96)

0.43(0.35)

1.03(1.65)

2.69(2.53)

0.92(0.29)

MI0DLE.-INCOME SCHOOL

Third

LowFriends

73.40(14.13)

7.58(5.97)

13.19(9.69)

1.31(1.41)

0.22(0.27)

1.07(1.03)

0.16(0.25)

0.69(0.70)

1.58(1.93)

0.79(0.41)

Grade

HighFriends

78.48(14.00)

3.92(5.27)

12.08(9.34)

1.02(0.80)

0.27(0.24)

1.10(0.98)

0.10(0.19)

0.74(0.71)

1.46(1.33)

0.86(0.35)

Fourth

LowFriends

49.32(9.10)

4.09(4.02)

34.55(9.03)

4.59(2.96)

0.03(0.02)

4.46(2.80)

0.10(0.45)

1.05(0.99)

0.86(0.99)

0.95(0.22)

Grade

HighFriends

38.00(7.99)

3.49(2.21)

32.71(9.39)

17.40(34.82)

0.02(0.01)

5.76(4.63)

0.01(0.01)

0.67(0.74)

0.93(0.78)

0.97(0.10)

716 Child Development

dispensed and friendship as a functimi of socialclass, regression equations were computedseparately for each school, with friends as thedependent variable. Table 5 shows that verbalreinforcement accounts for the most variancein the relationship of reinforcement dispensedto friendship in the middle-income school andnonverbal reinforcement accounts for the mostvariance in this relationship in the lower-income school.

IMsciissicm

The findings support the conclusion thatpopular children are more skillful than un-popular children and interact differently withtheir peers. The classroom interaction data areconsistent witK Hartup et al's (1967) findingof correlation between acceptance scores apddistribution of positive reinforcement in tv/pmiddle-income nursery school classes. Popularchildren were also'^ore knowledgeable abouthow to make friends. The strongest findingwas the relationship Between performance onthe unrelated-word-pairs task and the friend-ship main effect. I'his finding is consistentwim Rubin's (1972) report of high positivepartial correlations (with IQ held constant)between popularity and performance on theClucksberg and Krauss (1967) referential-communication task. Asher and Parke (1975)reported that second graders made very fewenors in referential communication on unre-lated word pairs. However, a strong mono-tonic developmental effect was observed fromsecond to sixth grade on the related-word-pairslist. This finding was replicated in the presentinvestigation. Asher and Parke argued thatchanges in performance on the related-word-pairs list may be indicative of "comparisonprocesses." In comparison processes the childmust produce a good clue word by editingfrom a total list of possible associates to thereferent that clue word which is also less an

associate to the nonreferent. Themmablx.§flltts by taldng^ihe i^Fsp^tive of ^Igteuer* Differential effects on the related- andunrelated-woHi-pairs lists in the present inves-tigation suggest that comparison processes maynot be operative in having or making friends.Instead, a more primitive skill may be in-volved, in which the high-fdends child ismore able than the low-friends child to com-municate to a listener what he is talking aboutin situations where the fine discriminationtapped by the related-word-pairs task is un-necessary. The unrelated-word-pair skill maybe more related to Vygotsky's (1962) investi-gations of private or unedited inner speech asegocentric thought. Part of the function servedby the familiar classroom activity of "showand tell" may be to train the child to bringhis audience along with him in showing ortelling about something, a skill which may betapped by the unrelated-word-pair task.

The results also suggest that there arerelationships among measures of friendship,social skills, and social interaction. However,the relationships obtained do not support thehypothesis that social skill variables whichdiffer across age will also necessarily be re-lated to a criterion variable of successful socialinteraction such as friendship. For example,the grade-level univariate F ratios for therelated-word-pair, blindfolded-listener, andperceptual-decentering tasks were large. How-ever, these effects were not significant at the.05 level for the friends main effect. There is..therefore no reason to suspect that "skills"logically related to making friends (such asblindfolded-listener role-taking skills) are infact related, without prior validation. It istherefore improper to label performance on atask a "social skill" simply because older chil-dren do better than younger children on thetask. It may be necessary to validate the taskby showing that performance on the task has

TABLE 5

MULTIPLE REGRESSION OF NUMBER OF FRIENDS ON POSITIVE VERBAL ( D 4- V) AND POSITIVE NONVERBAL(D -|- N) REINFORCEMENT DISPENSED TO PEERS AS A FUNCTION or SOCIAL CLASS AND GRADE LEVEL

LowerMiddle

SCHOOL

incomeincome

D-f-V

Proportionof Variance

Accounted For

128678

Directionof

Weights

-f+

D + N

Proportionof Variance

Accounted For

.780.259

Directionof

Weights

-H

COVARIANCE

(D -F V, D + N)

Proportionof Variance

Accounted For

.092.063

discriminant validity with reference to a cri-terion such as sociometric status, which itselfhas been shown to have predictive validity.

The finding that nonverbal reinforcementdispensed is related to friendship in the lower-income school whereas verbal reinforcementdispensed is related to friendship in the mid-dle-income school may be an important resultin designing interventions for socially isolatedchildren. It may be necessary to design dif-ferent interventions for children in differentschools. While it could be argued that theeffective number of subjects for analyzingsociometric position in this study is the num-ber of classrooms, not the number of children,school-wide sociometric data conelate ex-tremely highly with within-classroom socio-metric data, and the consistency is evengreater for the extremes of friendship choicesreceived (Bell & French 1950; Gronlund &Whitney 1956).

Significant interactions between socialclass and grade level would seem to be parsi-moniously explained by suggesting that mid-dle-income-school children's orientation shiftsmore toward a peer-interaction mode whereaslow-income-school children's orientation shiftsmore toward task behavior and interaction withthe teacher. For example, from third to fourthgrade the relative frequency of neutral inter-action with peers moves from 30.14% to10.68% in the lower-income school and from12.64% to 33.63% in the middle-incomeschool. It is unclear why such shifts wouldtake place, but it is likely that lower-income-school fourth-grade teachers stress remedia-tion of academic skills whereas middle-income-school fourth-grade teachers relax in this area.On-task behavior increases in the lower-incomeschool from 47.26% to 72.79% from third tofourth grade and decreases in the middle-income school from 75.94% to 43.66% fromthird to fourth grade. However, it is interest-ing that the making-friends scores of middle-income children decrease while those of lower-income children increase; also, middle-incomechildren catch up to lower-income children onthe identification of affect in faces. Perhap.ssocial skill development lags the shifts in em-phasis in the two schools.

It is insufficient to study only the co-variation among social skills, social interaction,and friendship. Subsequent research should be

Gottman, Qinso, and Rasmi:»sen 717

designed to train low-friends children on thosevariables which were shown to be related tothe friendship main effect. These interventionstudies should use sociometric status as thedependent variable. In a recent reyfejM,.jofiatevyentions for socially isolated children,Asher, Oden, and Gottman (in press) foundthat all interventions in which sociometric po-sition was the dependent measure resulted insmall ga ins. In those few cases where interven-tions included a reasonably long term follow-up, these initial gains returned to baseline.The same conclusion was drawn in an earlierreview by Bonney (1971). The present inves-tigation may suggest one possible reason forthis unfortunate return-to-baseline effect. Mc-Fall (1975, p. 7) discussed this issue for socialskill training in the area of assertion: "Investi-gators have relied on little more than theirclinical intuitions to decide what assertive re-sponses to teach in their training programs.This is unfortunate, since there is an integralrelationship between the validity of the re-sponses selected for training—that is, the pro-gram's content—and the potential effectivenessof a training program's techniques."

The present investigation can function asa discriminant validity study for the design ofintervention programs. A coaching study wassubsequently performed, training low-friendschildren on those variables identified in thepresent investigation. There were two experi-mental and two control children. Long-termfollow-up indicated that the experimental chil-dren changed significantly. Interrupted time-series analyses showed no significant increasein the total frequency of interaction for anychild; however, experimental children redis-tributed their interaction to their new friends.*This study is currently being repeated with alarger N. Previous intervention studies in thisarea have been focused on contingency man-agement (Walker & Hops 1973) or modeling(O'Connor 1969, 1972). While coaching as atechnique has been used successfully withadults in areas of assertion training (McFall& Twentyman 1973) and social skill training(Goldsmith & McFall 1975), there has beenno systematic study of the effects of coachingchildren in social skill training.

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