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Findings of a recent study showed that anxious solitary girls (between 9-10 years old) had
more problems interacting with both familiar and unfamiliar playmates than girls not
described as anxious and solitary.
Some of the anxious girls’ behavior actually improved while playing with unfamiliar
peer groups. The unfamiliar groups were less likely to mistreat the anxious girls than
playmates who already knew them and had labeled them as such.
Methods
209 fourth grade girls with an average age of nine and a half were identified as either
anxious solitary, or behaviorally normative by teachers’ reports and observation.
Half of the girls were African American and half were European American. These students
attended 13 urban and suburban schools in a midsize southeastern city in the U.S.A.
After the children’s behavior had been cataloged as either anxious solitary, or
behaviorally normative, the girls joined in one-hour play groups, which contained five
same race familiar or unfamiliar girls. Each play group met for one hour daily for five
days in a row.
A structured play activity was started by the experimenter, who then left the room. The
girls’ activities were monitored from a recording room. Researchers rarely
intervened. Each girl was interviewed following each of the play sessions, to get her
input and sociometric rankings for her playmates.
Results
Researchers found that both unfamiliar and familiar playmates saw the anxious solitary
girls as more anxious solitary than other girls after the first play session.
This study suggests that in the familiar groups, the anxious solitary girls' behavior was
impacted more negatively, relative to behaviorally normative girls, because of the
confrontational atmosphere. When the anxious solitary girls were already known, they were
left out of the group, talked about, teased, and ignored more often than in the unfamiliar
groups.
Socially awkward behavior by the anxious solitary girls was seen more commonly in the
familiar setting. About 65% of group playmates' conversations neither addressed nor
referred to re-entering anxious solitary girls. Approximately 54% of playmates'
communications didn’t talk to or refer to re-entering non-anxious-solitary girls.
This result suggests that anxious solitary girls experienced more indirect exclusion than
did other girls upon play group re-entry.
Conclusions
Researchers concluded that girls' social behavior is related to both individual and
situational characteristics. These conclusions suggest a child by environment model of
social behavior.
The findings also suggest that mistreatment of children by their peers is more likely to
occur among those peers who are better acquainted with each other, rather than those who
are unfamiliar with each other. If one child is singled out for being undesirably
different, the findings indicate that the child will continue to be seen that way by the
group. Only by entering a new group is such a child likely to shake off the stigma of such
a label.
Complete findings of the study can be found in
Child Development; January 2005 Volume 76, Issue I, P. 227
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