The association between preschool children's social functioning and their emergent academic skills

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between social functioning and emergent academic development in a sample of 467 preschool children (M = 55.9 months old, SD = 3.8). Teachers reported on children’s aggression, attention problems, and prosocial skills. Preliteracy, language, and early mathematics skills were assessed with standardized tests. Better social functioning was associated with stronger academic development. Attention problems were related to poorer academic development controlling for aggression and social skills, pointing to the importance of attention in these relations. Children’s social skills were related to academic development controlling for attention and aggression problems, consistent with models suggesting that children’s social strengths and difficulties are independently related to their academic development. Support was not found for the hypothesis that these relationships would be stronger in boys than in girls. Some relationships were stronger in African American than Caucasian children. Children’s self-reported feelings about school moderated several relationships, consistent with the idea that positive feelings about school may be a protective factor against co-occurring academic and social problems.

Expressive language and prosocial behaviour in early childhood: Longitudinal associations in the UK Millennium Cohort Study

“…Social competence and social skills training has been found to be associated with children's long-term success within the classroom environment, both academically and socially (e.g., Arnold, Kupersmidt, Voegler-Lee, & Marshall, 2012;Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli, Bandura, & Zimbardo, 2000).…”

Recursos multimídia no ensino de habilidades sociais a crianças de baixo rendimento acadêmico

“…O campo teórico-prático do Treinamento de Habilidades Sociais (THS) tem trazido contribuições para a compreensão do desenvolvimento social e acadê-mico na escola, demonstrando empiricamente a efi cácia de programas de intervenção para a população com baixo rendimento acadêmico. Vários estudos (Arnold, Kurpersmidt, Voegler-Lee, & Marshall, 2012;Bandeira, Rocha, Pires, et al, 2006;Barreto, Freitas, & Del Prette, 2011;Cia & Barham, 2009; Z. A. P. Del Prette, Del Prette, Oliveira, Gresham, & Vance, 2012;Feitosa, Del Prette, Del Prette, & Loureiro, 2011;Ray & Elliott, 2006;Samadzadeh, Abbasi, & Shahbazzadegan, 2011) têm mostrado uma correlação positiva entre habilidades sociais e desempenho acadêmico para diferentes populações (pré-escolares, escolares, pré--adolescentes).…”

Factor Validation of the Portuguese Version of the Social Skills Scale of the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales

“…This evidence justifies the growing interest in the study of disorders associated with social skill deficits diagnosed in the preschool period, such as the Autism Spectrum Disorders (Wang et al, 2011), among others. Thus, the collection of information regarding the socioemotional and behavioral skills of the child can have multiple purposes, such as identifying the presence of a delay in the socioemotional skills, collecting clues to assess the degree of impairment associated with externalizing (Gomes, Crepaldi, & Bigras, 2013) and/or internalizing behavior problems, or even facilitating planning of interventions focused on the potential/positive behaviors of the child (Arnold et al, 2012;Bornstein et al, 2010).…”