A Study On The Relationship Between Shyness And Withdrawal And Social Adjustment In Young Children

Social adaptation is an important part of children's socializing development.Peers are important agents of children's socialization.Active interaction with peers promotes good social adaptation of children(Rubin,Bukowski,& Parker,2015).Studies have found that shy children do not actively interact with peers in social situations and maintain solitary behavior patterns,which often lead to negative social adaptation results.However,existing studies have shown that not all shy children show difficulty in adapting to society.The ability of emotional regulation was positively related to social adaptation(Shields,1997),emotional regulation may slow down negative social adaptation of shy children.Based on this,this article will examine the relationship between shyness and social adaptation,and the moderating role of emotional regulation ability between shyness and social adaptation.Study 1 is focus on developing Chinese revision of the Emotion Regulation Checklist(ERC),which based on the ERC developed by Shields and Cicchetti(1997).This revised scale could be an effective tool to assess the emotional regulation ability of preschool children aged 3-6 in China.Preschool teachers completed questionnaires of 248 preschool children(Mage = 70.82 months,SD = 5.40 months),including Emotion Regulation Checklist,Child Behavior Rating Scale,Teacher Behavior Rating Scale,and Preschool Peer Victimization Measure,and mothers completed questionnaire of Children's Emotional Adjustment Scale–Preschool Version.The results show that the revised Emotion Regulation Checklist has good reliability and validity,and can be used as an assessment tool for the emotional regulation ability of preschool children in China.Study 2 is devoted to exploring the relationship between shyness and social adaptation,and the moderating role of emotional regulation ability between shyness and social adaptation.Teachers completed questionnaires of 194 preschool children(Mage = 70.82 months,SD = 5.40 months),including Social Skills Teacher Rating System,Child Behavior Scale and Emotion Regulation Checklist were used to measure the development of children's emotional regulation ability,and social adaptation.Mothers completed Child Social Preference Scale to measure the level of children's shyness.The results found that:(1)Shyness was positively related to outlier behavior,negatively related to interpersonal skills and oral opinions.(2)There is asignificant positive correlation between emotional regulation ability and social adaptation.The Emotion Regulation dimension in emotional regulation ability is significantly negatively correlated with outlier behavior,unrejected behavior,and internalization problems,and significantly positively correlated with interpersonal skills and oral claims.In contrast,the Lability/Negativity emotion dimension is positively associated with outlier behavior and unrejected behavior,is negatively internalization problem and interpersonal skills and oral claims.(3)Emotional regulation ability plays a regulating role in the relationship between shyness and social adaptation.Emotion regulation dimension plays the moderating effect between shyness and outlier behavior,unrejected behavior,interpersonal skills and oral claims.The Lability/Negativity dimension plays the moderating effect between shyness and outlier behavior.