Poster #210 - Shyness and Socio-Emotional Functioning in Chinese Kindergarteners: The Role of Mothers and Peers

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Background & Aims: Shyness is a temperamental trait characterized by excessive wariness, unease, and self-consciousness when encountering novel social settings and perceived social-evaluated concerns and has been associated with a host of socio-emotional maladjustment outcomes, including internalizing problems, peer problems, and school adjustment difficulties. Starting in early childhood, peer context plays an important role in children’s socioemotional functioning. Given that young shy children in China are now prone to provoke negative peer experience, which in turn, help to account for links between shyness and indices of school-adjustment difficulties. Previous research has investigated the relation between mother personality characteristics and child outcomes. However, there is relatively little research explored role of maternal personality and peer acceptance in the relations between shyness adjustment outcomes. Thus, the goal of the present study was to explore the mediating role of peer acceptance in the prediction of adjustment outcomes of young shy children, and the moderating role of maternal personality in the relation between shyness and peer acceptance (See Figure 1.). Consistent with prior research, it was hypothesized that the relation between shyness and school adjustment would be partially mediated by peer relations (i.e., peer acceptance), and it was also speculated that maternal personality (i.e. extraversion and neuroticism) would moderate associations between shyness and peer acceptance.
Methods: Participants were 360 children (200 boys, 160 girls, Mage = 4.72 years, SD = 0.63) recruited from two public two public schools (13 classrooms) in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. Data were collected at three time points. At Time 1, mothers rated their children’s shyness (Child Social Preference Scale) and their own personality (Ten Item Personality Inventory). One year later at Time 2, children were interviewed individually by research assistant about peer nominations. Again half year later at Time 3, teachers completed children’s interpersonal skills, verbal assertion, internalizing problems, asocial with peers, excluded by peers (Social Skills Rating System and Child Behavior Scale).
Results: The results indicated that child shyness was significantly and negatively associated with peer acceptance, teacher-rated interpersonal skills and verbal assertion, and positively associated with teacher-rated internalizing problems, asocial with peers and excluded by peers. The SPSS macro PROCESS (Hayes, 2012) was computed to explore the mediator (i.e., peer acceptance). The results indicated that shyness directly predicted children’s peer acceptance, interpersonal skills, verbal assertion, internalizing problems, asocial with peers and excluded by peers. When shyness and peer acceptance were entered simultaneously into the regression model, the relation between shyness and socio-emotional adjustment was reduced (See Table 1.). And then, the SPSS macro PROCESS was again used to explore the effect of the moderators (i.e., extraversion and neuroticism) in the relation between shyness and peer acceptance in the mediated model. The results indicated, for the mediated model that included interpersonal skills, verbal assertion, internalizing problems, asocial with peers, and excluded by peers, the pathway between shyness and peer acceptance was significantly moderated by mothers’ extraversion and neuroticism.

Authors

• Jingjing Zhu, Shanghai Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Yan Li, Shanghai Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author