Poster #233 - Attachment and Children's Peer Relationships: Teacher-Child Relationship Quality as a Moderator

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

The quality of young children’s relationships with their parents and teachers is thought to play a critical role in the subsequent development of positive peer relationships. Efforts to understand how individual differences in peer relationships arise has indicated that having a secure infant-parent attachment may help children develop the skills and mindset they need to have positive peer interactions (Pallini, Baiocco, Schneider, & Madigan, 2014). However, a remaining question is whether there are protective factors that relate to better peer relationships for insecurely attached children. One potential protective factor is high-quality teacher-child relationships. Children who are insecurely attached to their primary caregiver may still be able to develop a positive and supportive relationship with their teacher (Sabol & Pianta, 2012). Previous research shows that high quality teacher-child relationships relate to better peer relationship outcomes (Rudasill, Niehaus, Buhs, & White, 2013), but researchers have not yet examined the hypothesis that teacher-child relationships act as a protective factor for insecurely attached children’s peer relationships.
The present study will use a sample of 672 children from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a longitudinal birth cohort study (see Table 1). Child-mother attachment was assessed at 15 months using the Strange Situation procedure, and teacher-child closeness and conflict were examined at 54 months using the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale. The outcomes of interest were collected in third grade and included the children’s social dissatisfaction, popularity level, friendship quality, and positive and negative aspects of their relationship with their best friend. All outcomes were assessed using either child-completed or teacher-completed questionnaires.
As less than 15% of the classrooms included more than one child, multiple regression analyses were conducted for each peer outcome. To examine teacher-child relationship quality as a possible protective factor, the models included teacher-child closeness and conflict interacted with the children’s attachment status (secure versus insecure). The interaction between teacher-child conflict and attachment status was significantly related to children’s social dissatisfaction (b= -.26, SE= .12, p= .03), friendship quality (b= .02, SE= .01, p= .03), and negative relationship aspects (b= -.02, SE= .01, p= .02) and was marginally significant when looking at the children’s popularity level (b= .01, SE= .00, p= .06) and positive relationship aspects (b= .01, SE= .00, p= .06).
These interactions indicated that insecurely attached children tended to have more problems with their peers regardless of their level of teacher-child conflict. Securely attached children, however, showed more peer relationship problems in third grade if they experienced more conflict with their preschool teachers. Figure 1 illustrates the interaction for the social dissatisfaction outcome, but the pattern was similar for all of the examined outcomes. Although not consistent with theory about the teacher-child relationship acting as a protective factor, the results do suggest that children otherwise not at high risk for peer problems due to their secure attachment status may experience problems with their peers when teacher conflict is high. Further analyses will be performed to determine whether results differ for the specific insecure attachment patterns.

Authors

• Tiffany J Foster, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Peg Burchinal, University of North Carolina
  Non-Presenting Author