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    This study examined relations between social contingency in mother-child interaction and low-income 2-year-olds' social competence, using a cross-sectional design (N = 47). Measures of social contingency included time spent in joint attention and dyadic turn-taking behaviors following maternal bids. Measures of child social competence included emotional self-regulation during a delay- of-gratification task and empathic responsiveness toward an experimenter feigning injury. Social contingency was related to children's use of self-regulatory strategies, but not to empathic responsiveness. Child negative emotionality and gender contributed to explanations of children's self-regulatory strategy use. More emotionally negative children spent less time using self-distraction; girls used less self-distraction and more comfort-seeking during delay than did boys. However, time spent in joint attention made an additional independent contribution over and above child factors.
    Contingency
    Child Development
    Citations (140)
    Social relationships are as important to people with autism as they are to any other member of society. However, a primary behavioral characteristic used to define the syndrome of autism is a paucity of social interaction. Such an observation about disordered behavior is really a proposition about a situation in need of remedy. A proposition is simply a statement about a problem to be solved, and the social interaction literature can be viewed as a concatenation of propositions. One of the first propositions tendered regarding autism was how to increase precursors to social interaction. The solution to that problem was to task analyze precursor behaviors and systematically structure their occurrence. Because of the success of these efforts, other previously untenable aspects of social interaction were targeted for analysis. As more and more social behaviors were proposed for analysis and studied, the notion of social skills emerged as a guiding theme. The concept of social skills itself occasioned an expansion of researchers’ propositions regarding what was relevant to social interaction. The answers to those questions have made the study of social interaction far more complex than was conceived originally. Emerging propositions in researchers’ work include questions about the nature of social competence, the development of friendships and other social relationships, and the ways in which various aggregates of behavior can assist us in understanding those broader goals. These more recent propositions are historical in context, but prescriptive in our pursuit of enriching the social participation of people with autism. If the past is any predictor of the future, social interaction research for people with autism is entering a period of fertile analysis and application.
    Proposition
    Citations (32)
    This study examined the effects of (a) integrating handicapped and nonhandicapped children in preschools and (b) a condition designed to promote social integration. Fifty-six children with mild and moderate handicaps were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions: integrated/social interaction, integrated/child-directed, segregated/social interaction, and segregated/child-directed. Observation revealed a higher proportion of interactive play, as well as higher language development, in the social interaction conditions; and children in the integrated/social interaction condition received significantly higher ratings of social competence. These data suggest that structuring social interaction between higher and lower performing children can result in benefits to the lower performing students.
    Social Integration
    Social Acceptance
    Social Skills
    Peer acceptance
    Citations (127)
    Previous research on the social competence of LD children has primarily focused on social skill or social processing deficits. The present research examines two hypotheses: (1) that LD children differ not only in their social strategies but also in their goals for social interaction and (2) that differences in the social goals and strategies of LD children are developmentally related. Forty-eight second- through fifth-grade boys were shown four hypothetical social situations and were individually interviewed about their goals and strategies. Each social situation was presented in an explicit prosocial goal and a no-goal condition. Data analysis proceeded sequentially with a content analysis of the responses followed by an analysis of the interpersonal developmental level of responses. LD children were found to perform with less social competence and at lower developmental levels than nonhandicapped peers; however, social competence differences were limited to peer conflict situations. Results of the study are discussed with respect to (1) the variability of LD childreny's social competence across interactional contexts, (2) the importance of LD children's social goals as well as their social skills, and (3) the potential utility of an interpersonal developmental model for conceptualizing LD children's social competence.
    Prosocial Behavior
    Social Skills
    Social Learning
    Citations (49)
    Social exchange theory has long emphasized that social interaction entails both rewards and costs. Research on the effects of social relations on psychological well-being, however, has generally ignored the negative side of social interaction. This study examined the relative impact of positive and negative social outcomes on older women's well-being. The sample consisted of 120 widowed women between the ages of 60 and 89. Multiple regression analyses revealed that negative social outcomes were more consistently and more strongly related to well-being than were positive social outcomes. This effect of negative social involvement did not appear to be due to major differences among women with high versus moderate or low levels of problematic social ties. Analyses of variance indicated that these three groups of women differed neither in important background characteristics nor in indices of social competence. The results demonstrate the importance of assessing the specific content of social relations. Implications for the design of social network interventions are discussed.
    Social exchange theory
    Social comparison theory
    Citations (1,326)