| Peer relationship refers to a kind of interpersonal relationship established and developed in the process of communication between peers or individuals with similar psychological development level(Zhang,2005),which is a static result of peer communication.As an important content of socialization,peer relationship in early childhood not only plays an important role in children's current and future socialization process(Sang,2006;Zhang,1999;Ronald,Happ,Hughes,& Plomin,2005),but also has a profound impact on children's future academic achievement and social adaptation(Eggum-wilkens et al.,2014;Greenman,Schneider,& Tomada,2009;Hernández et al.,2016).Therefore,it is of great scientific value and practical significance to study the influencing factors and mechanism of peer relationship in early childhood.With regard to the influencing factors of young children's peer relationship,there have been more researches at home and abroad on external environment factors and individual factors.The former mainly involves family factors and teacher factors,while the latter mainly includes some specific social behaviors(such as prosocial behaviors and aggressive destructive behaviors),social cognitive abilities(such as psychological theory and emotional understanding),and interpersonal attraction factors such as appearance,temperament and personality characteristics.As an important factor affecting children's development,cognitive ability may also have an important impact on children's peer relationship.However,at present,there is no study to systematically investigate the role of cognitive ability in young children's peer relationship,and whether the effect of cognitive ability on young children's peer relationship changes with age is not clear.At the same time,what is the mechanism of cognitive ability on children's peer relationship,and whether its effect on children's peer relationship will be affected by another important factor of children's peer relationship,social cognitive ability,is still not clear.Therefore,this study intends to explore two issues from the perspective of integration through a one-year longitudinal tracking:(1)the impact of cognitive ability on young children's peer relationship and whether the effect of cognitive ability on young children's peer relationship changes with age(Study 1);and(2)whether social cognitive ability modulates the impact of cognitive abilityon young children's peer relationship(Study 2).The first study investigated the influence of cognitive ability on young children's peer relationship and whether the predictive power of cognitive ability on young children's peer relationship changed with age.105 4-5-year-old children(61 males and 44 females)in a kindergarten were selected to measure the children's peer relationship(Peer Nomination Test: taking peer acceptance and peer rejection as indicators),cognitive ability(including language,attention,working memory,cognitive flexibility and fluid reasoning,etc.),and peer relationship and these cognitive ability were measured again one year later(5-6 years old).The scores of all specific cognitive abilities after standardization were summed as the final scores of cognitive ability.The results showed that:(1)cognitive ability had a significant impact on children's peer relationship.Specifically,cognitive ability could positively predict the peer acceptance of children one year later,and negatively predict the peer rejection of children one year later;(2)the influence of cognitive ability on the peer relationship of children changed with age: as the age increased,the relationship between children's cognitive ability and peer acceptance was weaker and weaker,while the relationship between children's cognitive ability and peer rejection was stronger and stronger.These results showed that cognitive ability had an important influence on children's peer relationship,and the effect of cognitive ability on children's peer relationship would change with age.The second study examined the modulating role of social cognitive ability in the process of cognitive ability affecting children's peer relationship,to explore the possible mechanism of cognitive ability affecting children's peer relationship.On the basis of the first study,classical tasks were used to measure the theory of mind and emotional comprehension ability(two core social cognitive abilities)at two time points.The scores of theory of mind and emotional comprehension ability were standardized and then summed as the final scores of social cognitive ability.Cognitive ability was taken as the independent variable,social cognitive ability as the modulating variable,peer acceptance and peer Rejection was used as dependent variable respectively to analyze the modulating effect of two horizontal periods(4-5 years old and 5-6 years old)and a longitudinal(4-5years old cognitive ability and social cognitive ability interacted to influence the peer relationship of5-6 years old).The results of two horizontal and one longitudinal analyses all showed that social cognitive ability modulated the effect of cognitive ability on peer rejection,but the modulating effect was not found on peer acceptance.Specifically,for those young children whose social cognitive ability were high,their cognitive ability had no significant negative impact on peer rejection.That is,as long as young children's social cognitive ability was high,no matter their cognitive ability was high or low,there was no significant difference in peer rejection;however,for those young children whose social cognitive ability were low,their cognitive ability had a more significant negativeimpact on peer rejection.That is to say,for children whose social cognitive ability was at a low level,the worse their cognitive ability were,the more rejection they received from their peers.On the contrary,the better their cognitive ability was,the less rejection they received from their peers.These results showed that social cognitive ability modulated the influence of cognitive ability on young children's peer relationship,but only on the indicators of peer rejection.In conclusion,the results of this study show that:(1)cognitive ability has an important impact on young children's peer relationship: cognitive ability can positively predict children's peer acceptance and negatively predict children's peer rejection;(2)social cognitive ability modulates the impact of cognitive ability on young children's peer rejection,but social cognitive ability has no modulating effect on the impact of cognitive ability on peer acceptance.Specifically,for those young children whose social cognitive ability were high,their cognitive ability had no significant negative impact on peer rejection;while for those young children whose social cognitive ability were low,their cognitive ability had a more significant negative impact on peer rejection.The results of this study show that cognitive ability plays an important role in peer relationship of 4-6-year-old children,and the effect of cognitive ability on peer relationship will change with age;social cognitive ability modulates the effect of cognitive ability on peer relationship of 4-6-year-old children,but only on peer rejection.For the first time,this study systematically investigated the influence of cognitive ability on young children's peer relationship.From the perspective of integration,longitudinal tracking design was used to investigate the prediction effect and mechanism of comprehensive cognitive ability on young children's peer relationship,which can make some contribution to enrich the field of children's peer relationship at home and abroad,and also provide new perspective and thinking for prediction and more targeted intervention of young children's peer relationship. |
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