Child shyness and peer likeability: The moderating role of pragmatics and vocabulary

Abstract

The association between shyness and children's likeability by peers was examined, with pragmatic difficulty and receptive and expressive vocabularies as moderators. Participants were 164 preschoolers (72 boys, 92 girls) between 52 and 79 months old in Singapore. A cross-informant methodology was used, with peers and teachers contributing to separate peer likeability ratings. The findings highlighted a conceptual distinction between peer- and teacher-rated likeability by peers. For the latter only, a 3-way interaction involving shyness, vocabulary, and pragmatic difficulty was found, indicating that for shy children with low vocabulary scores, those who experienced less pragmatic difficulty tended to be seen by teachers as more well-liked by peers than those with more pragmatic difficulty. This suggests that pragmatic skills may serve a protective function especially for shy children with poor vocabulary skills. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Child shyness is related to poorer peer acceptance and social competence Expressive vocabulary and pragmatic competence each has a buffering effect for shy children What the present study adds? Shyness is related to poorer peer likeability as assessed by teachers Shyness is unrelated to peer likeability as assessed by same- or different-sex peers Pragmatic skills buffer the effects of teacher-rated shyness only for children with poor receptive and expressive vocabularies The buffering effect of language ability is shown in a multilingual educational context.

Pragmatic Language Processing in the Adolescent Brain

“…Ten-year-old children who showed pragmatic competence during a conversation were judged as more popular, attractive, and academically successful by their peers [44]; shy preschool children were judged as more peer-likeable by their teachers when they showed good pragmatic skills [14]; and unpopular preadolescent children improved their peer acceptance and self-perceived social efficacy after receiving conversational skills training [7].…”

Executive functioning moderates associations between shyness and pragmatic abilities

“…However, it may have been the case that within the contexts that parents are observing their children (namely within a home environment) there is less observed challenge relative to what would be observed in social contexts with less familiar individuals (Asedorpf & Meier, 1993). For instance, teachers’ reports on the social functioning of shy children within a classroom context reflect less success relative to the report of non‐shy students (Cheung & Elliot, 2017; Coplan & Armer, 2005; Coplan & Weeks, 2009). Second, replicating previous work showing associations between EF and other aspects of pragmatics (e.g., Blain‐Brière et al., 2014; Rints et al., 2015), children with better performance on inhibitory control showed better pragmatic knowledge.…”

“…Indeed, stronger pragmatic abilities seem to serve as a protective factor for shy children. For instance, shy children (in the older preschool age range) with poor vocabulary skills who possessed better pragmatic skills (as per parent report) were rated by their teachers as being more well-liked by peers (Cheung & Elliott, 2017; also see Zhu et al, 2019). Further, shy 6 year olds with weaker pragmatic abilities at the beginning of a school year, as measured by the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL; Carrow-Woolfolk, 2008), tended to have worse socio-emotional outcomes later in the year (e.g., increased loneliness and social withdrawal; Coplan & Weeks, 2009).…”

Longitudinal associations between metaphor understanding and peer relationships in middle childhood

“…In addition, it would be interesting to complement peers' evaluation of social relationships with teachers' evaluation. In this respect, a recent paper reported a link between pragmatics and children's likeability only when rated by teachers (Cheung & Elliott, 2017), suggesting that peers' and teachers' ratings convey different meanings of likeability that are differently related to pragmatic skills.…”