Sponsor
Portland State University. Department of Psychology
First Advisor
Andrew Mashburn
Term of Graduation
Fall 2023
Date of Publication
12-6-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (M.S.) in Psychology
Department
Psychology
Language
English
Subjects
Early Childhood, Emotion Knowledge, Peer-Child Relationship Quality, Teacher-Child Relationship Quality
Physical Description
1 online resource (x, 190 pages)
Abstract
Close and high-quality relationships with teachers and peers are a significant, positive predictor of young children's academic and social-emotional skills, whereas early conflictual relationships can pose various short- and long-term socio-emotional and academic risks. Evidence also suggests that emotion knowledge, or the ways children identify, recognize, and apply emotional labels, are a crucial factor in children's early development including overcoming social-emotional challenges and fostering high-quality interpersonal relationships. Studies examining social relationships and emotion knowledge in early childhood, however, often reveal worrisome differences in between-group comparison designs. Particularly, minoritized children, and most often Black and African American, are associated with poorer rated emotion competencies, greater perceived dysregulation, and less close and more conflictual relationships with their teachers in comparison to their White or other affluent peers. Drawing from a sample of 124 Black and African American children, the current study employed a within-group design to examine the development of Black and African American children as they entered kindergarten. Children's early emotion knowledge was analyzed to 1) examine the hypothesized relationships between children's emotion knowledge and the development of children's interpersonal relationships with teachers and peers during kindergarten and 2) explore whether a feature of the classroom, namely, whether the level of chaos and structural support in the classroom, affected children's social relationships and the association between children's emotion knowledge and their social relationships. Despite the theoretical indications and empirical evidence suggesting that children's emotion knowledge impacts their interpersonal relationship quality, no clear or coherent patterns emerged from concurrent, developmental, or moderated models in support of the hypotheses. Implications regarding methodological practices are discussed, including suggestions for future approaches to research.
Rights
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Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/41679
Recommended Citation
Petit, Brielle Emily, "Emotion Knowledge, Its Applications, and Their Associations With African American Children's Social Relationships With Teachers and Peers in Kindergarten and First Grade" (2023). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 6594.