| According to Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model of home development (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci,1994), temperament and parenting are two important factors that affect infants' social development. Temperament and parenting have been demonstrated to influence infants' social development (Mills et al.,2012; Stright,2008; van Zeijl, et al.,2007; zhou li na,2008), but most of the research has discussed certain aspects of social development; moreover, those research was mostly cross-sectional studies. Thus, this research focused on the effect of temperament (i.e., effective control) and parenting styles on children' peer interaction, rules of behavior, language, cognitive and emotional development, the five aspects of social development in group, at both cross-sectional and longitudinal levels.This research had two main objectives. First, by analyzing the data of time 1, this research aimed to investigate the prediction of children' peer interaction, rules of behavior, language, cognitive and emotional development from effective control and parenting. In particular, this research examined the mediational role of effective control in the relationship between parenting and social development. Second, by analyzing the longitudinal data with cross lagged model, this research aimed to figure out how the change or development of children's peer interaction, rules of behavior, language, cognitive and emotion were related to effective control and parenting.To achieve the above objectives, this research consisted of two steps, with the first step being pilot study and the second step being main study. The purpose of pilot study was to prepare for the main study, from the participants, measures, and the research procedure. The main study was carried out at three time points to investigate the relationship of social development to effective control and parenting styles. The questionnaires used were Children Behavior Questionnaires (CBQ Subscale), Parenting Style Questionnaire, and Children Social Development in Group, and data were collected by mother-and teacher-reported. Timel investigated children's temperament, parenting styles and social development from three kindergartens in Nanjing, and time 2 and time 3 conducted follow-up study among two of the above three kindergartens with the time interval for data collection being 5 months.Time 1 had a sample of 477 children aged from 3.08 to 6.50 (SD=0.93) years old. The results of cross-sectional data analyses found that:(1) effective control significantly and positively predicted children's peer interaction, rules of behavior, language, cognitive and emotional development. (2) Parenting styles especially the permissive style significantly predicted children's social development, but the predictions were different from children's grade. Specifically, for the youngest children (grade 1), parents'parenting styles could not predict peer interaction, rules of behavior, language, cognitive and emotional development. For the children in Grade 2, mother's authoritative style significantly and positively predicted rules of behavior and emotional development; father's permissive style significantly and negatively predicted language development. For the oldest children, father's permissive style significantly and negatively predicted language and cognitive development; father's authoritarian significantly and positively predicted cognitive development; mother's authoritarian significantly and negatively predicted peer interaction; and mother's permissive style significantly and negatively predicted language development. (3) Effective control fully mediated the relationships between mother's permissive style and peer interaction, rules of behavior, language, cognitive and emotional development.The longitudinal data included a sample of 273 students, among which, the 1st grades were 159, aged from 3.08 to 4.33 (SD=0.54) years old and the 2nd grades were 114, aged from 4.08 to 5.08 (SD=0.53) years old. Using the data of time 1, time 2 and time 3, with cross lagged model, the main study found that (1) effective control at time 1 could significantly and positively predicted peer interaction, emotional development at time 2 and rules of behavior, language development at time 3. (2) Regarding the influence of parenting, father's authoritative style at time 1 significantly and positively predicted language development at time 2; father's authoritarian at time 2 significantly and negatively predicted cognitive development at time 3. Mother's authoritative style at time 1 significantly and positively predicted emotional development at time 2.This research concluded that effective control and parenting styles were important predictors of children's social development in group. Based on the cross-sectional level of data analysis, the influence of effective control on children's various dimensions of social development seemed to be similar across three grades; whereas, based on the longitudinal level of data analysis, the influences of effective control were different. Effective control fully mediated the relationship between parenting styles and children's social development. Regarding the effect of parenting styles, both the cross-sectional and longitudinal levels of data analyses, showed that its influence on children's social development was different from the three grades. |
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