Peer communication skills and social behavioral characteristics of preschool children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between peer communication skills and social behavioral characteristics of preschool children. Data for 42 preschool children, five to nine years old, were analyzed in the study. Teachers were asked to rate the children on a number of social behavior measures, and classify them into competent, aggressive and withdrawn groups. It was shown that children of the withdrawn group accepted more requests from others than those of the other groups. Generally, in terms of feedback they gave, the withdrawn were not much different from the competent, but forms of feedback were more often nonverbal. As for the aggressive, feedback was more verbal than the withdrawn when another directly spoke to them, but tended to be equally nonverbal when it was not clear whom other were speaking to.