Children’s social networks in developmental psychology: A network approach to capture and describe early social environments

Abstract

Psychologists are interested in understanding how early social environments impact children’s behavior and cognition. Early social environments are comprised of social relationships; however, there have been relatively few tools available to quantify the depth and breadth of children’s social relationships. We harnessed the power of social networks to demonstrate that networks can be used to describe children’s early social environments. Descriptive data from American children aged 6 months–5 years (n = 280; 47% female, 56% White) demonstrates that network properties can be used to provide a quantitative analysis of children’s early social environments and highlights how these environments vary across development. Social network methodology will provide researchers with a comprehensive picture of children’s early social experiences and improve studies exploring individual differences.

Does racial diversity affect White children’s racial bias and reasoning? Depends on where they live and how their social world is structured.

“…We did not collect information about the intensity or quality of the relationships for this particular sample. Children in smaller networks tend to have a higher proportion of high-intense relationships (Burke et al, 2022), however, which could explain why the number of children of color in the network had the strongest effect for children in smaller networks, where relationships tend to be higher intensity. Future work can start to explore this further by asking about the relative status within peer networks (e.g., who is seen as the leader within friend groups) or who is selected for leadership positions (e.g., team captain and classroom helper) and how that may also shape the messages children infer from interracial interactions.…”

“…This included 364 children aged 4–11 years ( M age = 6.62, SD age = 1.70). Parents of these children were sent The Child Social Network Questionnaire (Burke et al, 2022). Three hundred sixty-three parents returned the survey.…”

“…For example, if having more diverse social networks relates to less racial bias, it could be the case that experiences with people from diverse backgrounds mitigate the development of racial bias or that people with less bias select to have more diverse networks. An additional consideration when examining these relations early in development is that young children do not have complete autonomy over who is in their network; children’s early networks largely reflect parent childcare decisions (Burke et al, 2022). This raises the question of whether and how parents’ beliefs and values influence the characteristics and composition of children’s networks, which then in turn relate to children’s attitudes and biases.…”

Children’s evaluations of and reactions to racial discrimination.

“…We used the R package “tidycensus” to interface with ZIP code-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau. (b) As in prior research (Burke et al, 2020; Perry et al, 2019), we asked parents to report race/ethnicity information for their child’s frequent social contacts. Parents were asked to list (initials only) all of the people who lived with their child and up to 10 people with whom their child spent a significant amount of time.…”

Does racial diversity affect White children’s racial bias and reasoning? Depends on where they live and how their social world is structured

“…This included 364 children aged 4-11 years old (Mage = 6.62, SDage = 1.70. Parents of these children were sent the Child Social Network Questionnaire (Burke et al, 2022). 363 parents returned the survey.…”