Centrality in children's best friend networks: the role of social behaviour.

Centrality is an indicator of an individual's relative importance within a social group. Predictors of centrality in best friendship networks were examined in 146 children (70 boys and 76 girls, Mage  = 9.95). Children completed measures of social confidence, social desirability, friendship quality, school liking, and loneliness and nominated their best friends from within their class at two time points, 3 months apart. Multigroup path analysis revealed gender differences in the antecedents of centrality. Social confidence, social desirability, and friendship quality predicted changes in the indicators of centrality in best friend networks over time. Boys' social behaviour positively predicted changes in centrality, whereas girls' social behaviour negatively predicted changes in centrality. Together, these findings suggest that some aspects of social behaviour are influential for centrality in best friend groups.

Examining the components of children's peer liking as antecedents of school adjustment.

Children's social interactions with their peers influence their psychosocial adjustment; consequently, the relationship between class-wide peer liking, same-gender peer liking, and school adjustment was explored in two age groups. Peer liking was analysed using the social relations model (SRM). In Study 1, 205 children (103 female and 102 male, M(age) = 7.15, SD= 7 months) completed measures of peer liking and school adjustment, and teachers completed the Short-Form Teacher Rating Scale of School Adjustment (Short-Form TRSSA). In Study 2, 197 children (98 female and 90 male, M(age) = 9.87, SD= 5.9 months) completed measures of peer liking and school adjustment. Both studies yielded evidence of reciprocal liking and individual differences in the ratings of liking awarded to, and elicited from, both peer groups. Multigroup path analysis, with groups created according to gender, revealed that elements of liking predicted different aspects of school adjustment with some variation according to age and gender. Together, these findings suggest that the SRM can be used to examine peer liking and underscore the importance of children's peers for school adjustment.

Patterns of problem-solving in children's literacy and arithmetic.

Patterns of problem-solving among 5-to-7 year-olds' were examined on a range of literacy (reading and spelling) and arithmetic-based (addition and subtraction) problem-solving tasks using verbal self-reports to monitor strategy choice. The results showed higher levels of variability in the children's strategy choice across Years I and 2 on the arithmetic (addition and subtraction) than literacy-based tasks (reading and spelling). However, across all four tasks, the children showed a tendency to move from less sophisticated procedural-based strategies, which included phonological strategies for reading and spelling and counting-all and finger modellingfor addition and subtraction, to more efficient retrieval methods from Years I to 2. Distinct patterns in children's problem-solving skill were identified on the literacy and arithmetic tasks using two separate cluster analyses. There was a strong association between these two profiles showing that those children with more advanced problem-solving skills on the arithmetic tasks also showed more advanced profiles on the literacy tasks. The results highlight how different-aged children show flexibility in their use of problem-solving strategies across literacy and arithmetical contexts and reinforce the importance of studying variations in children's problem-solving skill across different educational contexts.

The small world of shakespeare's plays.

Drama, at least according to the Aristotelian view, is effective inasmuch as it successfully mirrors real aspects of human behavior. This leads to the hypothesis that successful dramas will portray fictional social networks that have the same properties as those typical of human beings across ages and cultures. We outline a methodology for investigating this hypothesis and use it to examine ten of Shakespeare's plays. The cliques and groups portrayed in the plays correspond closely to those which have been observed in spontaneous human interaction, including in hunter-gatherer societies, and the networks of the plays exhibit "small world" properties of the type which have been observed in many human-made and natural systems.