“He’s not playing with me”: Qualitative case studies exploring how temperament predicts peer engagement

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

Temperament is known to be one of the more biologically based individual differences in behavior, which together with environmental and contextual experiences (including peer engagement) help shape personality across the lifespan (Kagan & Snidman, 1999; Rothbart, 2007; Thomas et al., 1970). Several longitudinal studies clearly demonstrate that temperamental characteristics show considerable continuity over time and can predict later behavioral patterns (Caspi, 2000; Kochanska et al., 2007; Shigeto et al., 2014). Furthermore, another essential part of every individual’s life is their peers, with friends frequently acting as a protective factor against negative outcomes (Bollmer et al., 2005; Criss et al., 2017; Laursen et al., 2007). Given that temperament and peer engagement are such central elements of individual development, understanding the associations between the two could have significant implications for supporting young children.
Despite research linking temperament and peer engagement, inconsistencies in the literature remain. Although existing measures of temperament and peer engagement provide valuable information about these associations, many of them decontextualize interactions and fail to capture essential information. Consequently, we often have incomplete knowledge of why children with specific temperamental traits may thrive while others struggle with peers. The majority of existing tools are quantitative in nature, or are qualitative tools whose data are commonly quantified. Hence, we may miss out on the rich information about peer engagement that a qualitative tool provides. Given the unavailability of well-known qualitative tools that examine peer engagement and offer practical insight into the circumstances under which children successfully navigate engagement with peers, a new qualitative tool was created for this work. Thus, this study aimed to examine four children with certain combinations of temperamental traits (Figure 1), their peer interactions, the emerging patterns, and whether the qualitative observation tool provides in-depth data.
Data was collected from four children (two girls, two boys; two African American, one Latina, one White) drawn from a larger study of 106 children ages 3-5 from Head Start centers in a large mid-western state. They were purposively sampled based on teacher-reported temperament data (scores on effortful control, surgency/extraversion, and negative affectivity; collected using the Child Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart et al., 2001)). Qualitative observational data was researcher-reported. Each child was observed for a total of two hours, in 10 minute intervals.
The case studies revealed intriguing findings. Firstly, inhibited children require additional supports in classrooms, but can successfully connect with peers when these supports are available. They may be overlooked as ‘easy’ children based on quantitative data, hence affecting them detrimentally. Secondly, surgent/extraverted children may get more agitated with preferred peers, and require calming spaces (such as writing center) to work constructively. Friendships are important, but navigating them may pose challenges for these children. Thirdly, children could be exhibiting ‘quiet’ negative affect which is usually not reflected in quantitative measures, but could result in internalizing problems if left unchecked. These behaviors are also easy to miss using quantitative measures. Hence, the new qualitative tool does provide additional information which may be crucial for providing supports to children who need it.

Authors

• Sanchari Banerjee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Kristen L Bub, University of Georgia
  Non-Presenting Author