Social Interactions With Familiar and Unfamiliar Peers in Chinese Children: Relations With Social, School, and Psychological Adjustment

Abstract

This study examined how interactions with familiar and unfamiliar peers were associated with social, school, and psychological adjustment in Chinese children. A sample of children ( N = 256, 104 boys and 152 girls, M age = 11 years, ranging from 9 to 13 years) engaged in free play sessions in quartets consisting of 2 pairs of familiar children. Information on the relative proportion of time spent interacting with familiar, unfamiliar, and mixed peers was obtained from videotaped observations. Data on social (e.g., leadership, victimization), school (e.g., school competence, learning problems), and psychological (e.g., perceived self-worth, depression) adjustment were collected from multiple sources including teacher ratings, self-reports, and school records. The results showed that interaction with familiar peers was positively associated with social and school competence and negatively associated with social, behavioral, and learning problems. Interaction with mixed familiar and unfamiliar peers was positively associated with indexes of psychological adjustment and negatively associated with psychological problems. In addition, interaction with unfamiliar peers was infrequent and not associated with adjustment or problems. The results indicate that social interactions with different types of peers may reflect different aspects of competence among Chinese children.