The Relationship Among Children’s Peer Optimism, Self-perceived Social Competence And Peer Interaction In The Middle Childhood

Human beings have the instinct to seek close relationships and the needs of human interaction; Children’s peer interaction is an important part of the social development peer relationship has a profound and significant impact on the children’s mental health and social adaptation. Peer optimism expects the positive results of peer relationship and influences children’s processing of social information and further affects children’s acceptance level, two-way relationship and social behavior.Previous studies focused on how social behavior influence peer relationship or the relation between peer relationship and psychological behavior. There are few researches involve in the positive study of children’s peer relationship. It is necessary to carry out an in-depth discussion about the influence peer optimism has on peer relationships.Due to the lack of effective tools in measuring children’s peer optimism, this paper re-translated and revised Peer Life Orientation Test, by Deptula et al. to measure the children’s positive expectation of peer relationship. The results show that the revised questionnaire is of good validity.By controlling demographic variables(including gender and grade), the second study uses the Chinese version of the first study to measure peer optimistic situation of children from third and sixth grade of primary school. The study emphasizes on the effect patterns of peer optimism, self-perceived social competence and peer interactions and examines intermediary role of self-perceived social competence has between peer optimism and peer relationship.The main findings are as follows:1. The revised measurement is used to measure children’s peer optimism and can also be used as a research tool for relevant researches.2. There is a significant gender difference in children’s peer relationship in middle childhood. Girls’peer optimism levels are significantly higher than boys’;3. There is no significant grade difference in children’s peer optimism in Middle childhood;4. There is a significant gender difference in children’s peer relationship in middle childhood. Girls’ peer acceptance levels are significantly higher than boys’;5. There is significant grade difference in children’s peer relationship in Middle childhood;6. After controlling for demographic variables (including gender and grade), children peer optimism affects not only its peer acceptance and peer rejection level influence, but also through partial intermediary effect of self-perceived social competence affects peer acceptance and peer rejection level.