Poster #235 - The Impact of 3-year-old’s Social Networks on Perspective Taking

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

Integrative Statement

Perspective taking (PT) is an important skill children need to develop to be successful communicative partners. Prior work has explored how variations in children’s early social environments influence their ability to use this skill. Infants and children that have experience with multiple languages are better at PT - suggesting that the social environment influences the development of PT. (Fan et al., 2015; Liberman et al., 2016).
However, little work has explored the impact that broader social networks play in the development of PT. In adults, larger network size is related to better PT (Stiller and Dunbar, 2007), but no work has explored how social networks impact PT in young children. The present study set-out to answer: Do variations in children’s social networks relate to their PT? Specifically, does social network size relate to their PT?
Perspective taking was assessed using the Director Task. Children contributed 4 scores in 4 different trial types: Explicit vs. Implicit (the object they chose vs. the duration of looking to the right object) and Matched vs. Mismatched (Matched Trial: “Can you pass me the boat? It’s the one Natalie can see.” Mismatched Trial: “Can you pass me the boat? It’s the one Natalie cannot see.”). The Explicit Mismatch Trials were the only trials where children did not show above chance performance. Because we are interested in looking at individual differences, we focused our analysis to these trials because they provided the most variability.
To assess children’s social networks, we conducted follow-up phone interviews using The Infant Social Relationship Questionnaire, a measure developed by our group, with children who had participated in a behavioral PT study. Data were collected from 26 3-year-olds (Mage= 37.1 months, range: 35.3-38.8). Through interview, parents were asked to describe their child’s “typical week” of activities to generate a list of people their child sees regularly. For the initial analysis, the following was computed for each child: Network Size and whether or not the child was in daycare or preschool.
To explore whether network size is related to PT, a linear regression with PT as the outcome variable and Network Size and PPVT as explanatory variables was performed and showed that Network Size is positively related to PT performance (Figure 1). To ask whether these effects reflect variation in school experience, we next considered whether children were enrolled in daycare or preschool (n = 13) or not (n = 13, see Figure 2). A linear regression was performed with PT as the outcome variable and tested for main effects of Network Size, Daycare, and PPVT. The analysis showed a marginally significant effect of Network Size ( = 1.65, p = 0.055) and no effect of PPVT and school experience - suggesting that children’s social network size is a unique predictor of PT.
Initial results support existing work in adults that a larger social network is related to better PT, independent of school experience. Future work will explore structural dimensions of children’s social networks and how that relates to their social cognition.

Authors

• Nicole Burke, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Natalie Brezack, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marlene Meyer, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Woodward, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author