Updated for 6th edition, Jan. 2006.

What to study

p. 506: last 2 full paragraphs: Children’s increasing competence interacting with peers. What are the changes?
 Notice that mothers are more reliable play partners than infant peers (surprise!!)

p. 507, Fig. 12-1: Notice the increase in social play and play with peers, and the inverted U-pattern for play with mother. Define solitary play, parallel play, associative play, and cooperative play. See also Figure 12-2 on p. 508.

p. 508: Are the friendships of toddlers as strong and meaningful as the friendships of older children?
p. 510: What are the ethnic differences in  amount of time spent socializing with peers? What ages are children most likely to choose same-sex companions?

p. 511: Peers as reinforcers: Notice that RECIPROCITY is common even in the earliest peer interactions. This is the big finding of peer relationships.
Children more likely to imitate dominant, prestigious, and older children. Children imitate less as they get older because they have already internalized the rules of peer relationships. Peer pressure increases as children get older, and this is continued in the next section, on p. 512: Know what social comparison is. Notice the age changes mentioned.

p. 513: Know all the bold-faced terms. (This is also on the final exam study guide.):
Sociometric technique: How are children categorized into the 5 basic categories?
Popular Children (note the positive characteristics of most popular children but that some popular children are "domineering, arrogant, and both physically and relationally aggressive")
Average Children
Neglected Children
Rejected Children

Note that some rejected children are aggressive and some not. What are the non-aggressive rejected children like?

p. 514, 1st full para.: What are appropriate and inappropriate ways for a new child to enter a social group? Notice that it’s a good strategy to include other children in mutual activity—an example of reciprocity for successful peer relationships.

pp. 514-517: Understand Figure 12-4. This is explained in the text. It is also on the final essay exam study guide.
 

p. 515, bottom: Dodge (1986): Notice that there are a whole lot of things that socially incompetent children get wrong. What sorts of deficits do socially incompetent children have? (This is presented in Figure 12-5.)  (p. 517: It’s pretty much the same picture with aggressive children. Note the hostile attributions.)

What were the differences between popular and unpopular children in the goals they had in the Renshaw and Asher study?

p. 518: When can children differentiate attractive and unattractive children?

Note that people regard attractive people as having other positive attributes and unattractive people as having negative attributes like aggressiveness and anti-social behavior.
Is there any basis in reality for these judgments?
What is the major factor in negative self-appraisals of attractiveness for teenage girls? 

p. 527: What role may younger peers play for children who are socially isolated or poorly adjusted? Notice that this form of therapy originated with Harry Harlow’s work on rhesus monkeys.

 Gender and Peer acceptance: p. 527: At what age do children start having a pronounced preference for same-sex play partners? (Things change during adolescence again!) The vignette with Jake and Danny is amusing.
Notice that there are underground opposite-gender friendships. Are children who have some cross-gender relationships well-adjusted? What about is their primary relationships are cross-gender?

p. 519: What gender differences are there in children’s play groups? What differences are there in pretend play?

p. 520: Importance of having a name that doesn’t seem strange. Freakonomics finds that names become popular among the upper classes and then filter down to the middle and lower classes, so that by the time they get popular among the latter, they are already out of favor among the elites.

p. 521: Children are "creative and cruel" in expressing rejection of other children. Note Table 12-2.

Box 12.1: Victimization: Notice the sex differences in how children are victimized. This reflects findings on aggression discussed in Chap. 14. What are the two very different profiles of children who tend to be victimized? Notice that children with friends are less often victimized. What type of friends is it best to have to ensure you are not victimized?

p. 524: See Table 12-3 on reactions of rejected children. What kinds of children are most likely to be bothered by rejection? What response to rejection is most effective?

pp524-525: What type of child is most likely to feel lonely (Figure 12-6)? Not surprisingly, rejected children feel lonely, especially if they are unaggressive. (Aggressive children probably have inappropriately positive self-images.) (See the sad quote from an unpopular girl in Table 12-4.) Note the text emphasizes that the worst situation is when classmates actively dislike you. In other words, it’s not just being shy or lacking friends. It’s the active dislike that hurts.

p. 525: Having even one friend makes rejected children feel a lot better about themselves. But being verbally and physically victimized by peers is associated with higher levels of loneliness. Note that being unpopular is correlated with some bad things: unpopular kids drop out of school more often and are more likely to be criminals.
p. 527: What type of sociometric status is the most stable across time?
On p. 527, the text says that one reason for stability is reputational bias (know what this is) but what is the evidence that it’s not just children’s reputations that makes them rejected?

Box 12-2: What is the difference in life outcome for shy boys and girls?

p. 530: Figure 12-9: Note effects of child abuse on peer rejection. Abused children are also less able to maintain friendships. What is the main link between child abuse and peer rejection? (I.e., what attribute of abused children is most likely to make them rejected?)

p. 533: The essential ingredients in friendship are reciprocity and commitment. Note but do not memorize the 3-stage model of children’s understanding of friendship. Obviously, children become more sophisticated in how they think of friends as they get older. But notice that even in grades 2-3, children understand that friends share common activities and are similar to them demographically. In the final stage (grades 6-7), children understand the importance of intimacy and self-disclosure,  but there is still an understanding that friends share common interests and have similar attitudes and values. This underlines the point (see Table 12-6 and discussion on p. 535)  that positive reciprocity is important for actual friendship (as opposed to children’s understanding of friendship).
Which sex is more likely to be concerned that friends provide emotional assistance?

Box 12-3: Interesting discussion of children’s mutual enemies. Which sex is more likely to have mutual enemies? Which sociometric statuses are most likely to have mutual enemies? (No surprise here.) What are some of the long-term correlates of having same-sex mutual enemies?

How children make friends:
p. 535: Of the characteristics of friends, note especially the positive exchanges (friends like each other and enjoy the relationship) and the importance of establishing common ground (friendship involves reciprocal interests). But note that friends also compete with each other and they disagree more than non-friends (presumably because they interact with friends a lot more than non-friends).: How do the conflicts among friends differ from conflicts of non-friends?

p. 536: What is negative gossip? Notice both boys and girls do it. The conversation between Erica and Mikaila is a good illustration. At what age is negative gossip most important? At what age is self-disclosure most important?

p. 537: What differences are there in boys' and girls' friendships? (Seems ironic, but it makes sense given the explanation in the text.)

pp. 538-539: Which "myth" has the most support? Note that early dating and having numerous partners forecasts poor relationships, but some null findings as well. Recall that early maturation is linked to a variety of bad outcomes. Re myth 3, I suspect that all close relationships involve the same biological systems underlying intimacy and affection, but as the text notes, we expect different things from different sorts of relationships.

p. 540: Parents and peers have different spheres of influence. What are they?

p. 541: What type of parenting is associated with most resistance to peer pressure? See also Figure 12-10 on p. 542.

Dominance hierarchies
p. 543: What is a dominance hierarchy? At what age are they apparent? Notice that they develop very rapidly: Within 45 minutes in boys in grades 1-3. At what age are girls dominant to boys? What are the characteristics of dominant children? (On p. 543 the text states that dominant children are high in physical strength, physical attractiveness, and cognitive maturity, but at the bottom of 544 what age differences does the text note?
p. 544: not surprisingly, dominant children are imitated more.
Is aggression increased or decreased by forming a dominance hierarchy?
Besides its effect on aggression, what other two functions are proposed for dominance hierarchies?
 

p. 544: Know the definitions of clique and crowd. Notice that cliques a composed of same gender and same race children. Notice that adolescents don’t pick what crowd they are in and that the importance of crowds seems to peak in the early high school years.

Box 12-4: Note the contrast between individualistic and "group-oriented" (=collectivist) societies. What was the difference  in the association of peer rejection and shyness between Canadian and Chinese children at age 7-9? (But notice that it changed among 12-year-olds. According to the text, why was this?) Notice that doing well academically is more important for peer popularity for Chinese than for Canadian children.