Poster #113 - Pathways to Children’s Social Competence: Household Chaos, Parent-Child Relationships, Sibling Relationships, and Child Executive Function

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

Children’s social competence is foundational for their concurrent and future development. Considering social competence develops through social interactions within the family, the quality of the home environment, parent-child, and sibling relationships, along with child executive function, become important drivers for children’s social competence. (Acar et al., 2019; Caporaso et al., 2019; Korucu et al., 2017; Rolan et al., 2018). Nevertheless, sibling relationships have been a neglected construct in previous research. Overall, previous theoretical conceptualizations and empirical findings emphasize that the quality of within-family relationships (parent-child and sibling) and executive function foster or inhibit children’s social competence.
The aim of the current study was to investigate the contribution of household chaos, parent-child relationships and sibling relationships (positive and negative aspects), and child executive function to children’s social competence. We hypothesized that household chaos would undermine positive parent-child/sibling relationships and exacerbate negative parent-child/sibling relationships, which in turn would negatively influence children’s executive and social competence.
The participants were 354 typically developing young children (192 girls) whose ages were between 31-101 months (M=66.65, SD=15.88). A total of 38.7% of mothers were employed, and 61.3% were unemployed, though only 5.9% of fathers were unemployed.
We used the Childhood Executive Functioning Inventory (CHEXI; Thorell & Nyberg, 2008; Hamamcı et al., 2021) to assess children’s executive function, the Parent-Child Relationship Scale (PCRS; Hetherington & Clingempeel,1992; Aytaç et al., 2018) to assess the parent-child relationship, the Parental Expectations and Perceptions of Children's Sibling Relationships Questionnaire (PEPC-SRQ) (Kramer et al., 1995; Authors, 2022) to assess the relationship between siblings, and Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale (CHAOS) (Matheny et al., 1995; Sümer et al., 2013) to assess the degree of household chaos. Mothers completed the measures via Qualtrics. Each measure has been used and validated with Turkish parents and children, indicating acceptable validity and reliability for measures.
We initially determined the variables' normality assumptions according to the skewness and kurtosis criteria. We used path analysis to examine the hypothesized model.
Final model fit the data well (χ2 (2) = 8.123, p =.01; CFI = 0.990; RMSEA= .093 SRMR = 0.018). Children’s social competence was predicted by positive parent-child relationship (β = .16, SE=.05), sibling warmth (β = .28, SE=.07), household chaos (β = -.13, SE=.05), and child executive function (β = .20, SE=.05). We tested the indirect effects of parent-child and relationship in the association between household chaos and social competence via child executive function. There was a significant indirect effect of household chaos to child executive function via both sibling warmth (β = -.19, [95% CI: -.045 to -.006]) and positive parent-child relationship (β = -.11, [95% CI: -.021 to -.003]).
Findings from the current study highlighted that children's positive relationships with their parents and siblings could be influenced by household chaos, which consequently undermines their executive function and social competence. Investigating such within-family relationships and chaos may help tailor intervention programs targeting the reduction of household chaos and supporting positive within-family relationships.

Authors

• Beyza Hamamcı, Middle East Technical University
  Presenting Author

• Ibrahim Hakki Acar, Özyeğin University

• Selen Bostancı