Poor and unpopular: How verbal ability and theory of mind predict peer rejection in a socioeconomically diverse environment

This study compares associations between Peer Rejection (PR) and Verbal Ability (VA) and PR and Theory of Mind (ToM) within a socioeconomically diverse context. At the time the study was stopped, five participants, ages 6-9, were recruited from the Boys and Girls Club. Participating families completed socioeconomic status (SES) questionnaires written in either English or Spanish prior to an hour-long session with a team of Butler University undergraduate students. The undergraduates administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT) to assess VA; the Mind of the Eyes task, a series of three Faux Pas (FP) tasks, an emotion task, and a desire task to assess ToM skills; and a 20-question self-report peer rejection survey to assess PR. Results were compared between age, sex, race and socioeconomically matched participants as well as group norms from previous studies. No significant differences were observed within the sample set nor was correlational evidence found. POOR AND UNPOPULAR 3 Introduction Peer Rejection (PR) refers to a child’s negative interactions with other children. With each rejection a child faces, he or she has fewer opportunities to practice perspective-taking and build social competence (Hymel, Rubin, Rowden, & LeMare, 1990). As these experiences multiply, a child might develop a deficit in perspective-taking which heightens that child’s risk of developing maladaptive social behaviors including social isolation and aggression. In turn, these behaviors correlate with higher rates of PR (Hymel et al., 1990). The more PR a child experiences, the more vulnerable he or she becomes to loneliness, depression, poor academic performance, drop out, and/or criminal activity in adolescence (Bukowski & Adams, 2005; Parker & Asher, 1987). Given the many social and emotional risks associated with high instances of PR, many researchers have explored factors which mediate this vicious cycle (Bukowski & Adams, 2005) including Socioeconomic Status (SES; Bolger, Patterson, Thompson, & Kupersmidt, 1995; Eamon 2001; Patterson, Vaden & Kupersmidt, 1991; Odgers, Donely, Caspi, Bates, & Moffit, 2015), Verbal Ability (VA; Gertner, Rice, & Hadley, 1994), and Theory of Mind (ToM; Cutting & Dunn 1999; Miller, Reavis, & Avila, 2018; Slaughter, Dennis, & Pritchard, 2002). The goal of this study is to compare the predictive nature of each of these variables so that parents, teachers, and researchers can design more appropriate interventions for children who will likely experience PR in different learning environments. Review of Literature Research related to the association between SES and PR emerged in the early nineties. Using an assessment of family background and recent life events as well as a sociometric naming task, Patterson, Vaden, and Kupersmidt (1991) observed that children who experienced chronic stresses such as poverty, low-educational stimulation in the home, and parental absence were POOR AND UNPOPULAR 4 twice as likely to be rejected by their peers than children who do not have these experiences. The results of the study indicate that the impact of various chronic stressors is cumulative across the four factors primarily used to determine socioeconomic status, i.e. sex, marital status, education, and occupation (Hollingshead 1975). In 1995, Bolger and Thompson joined Patterson and Kupersmidt to examine the ways chronic and intermittent economic hardships affected children’s social relationships (Bolger et al., 1995). Their study produced evidence consistent with Patterson and Kupersmidt’s earlier research and expanded upon these findings. The team compared social adjustment across gender and race. Conclusively, the results suggest that the duration of economic hardship and the chronicity of poverty have the strongest predictive power toward likelihood of a child’s rejection. However, their study also generated evidence that parent involvement strongly mediates this effect. Shortly after the mediating effects of parenting were discovered, researchers in the field of child language began exploring the relationships between Verbal Ability and poverty as well as between verbal ability and social acceptance (e.g. Gertner et al. 1994; Hart & Risley 1995). Hart and Risley (1995), in one of the most influential child language studies of the era, sampled children from various SES backgrounds and compared parent and child vocabularies across each socioeconomic class. Their results indicated lower SES corresponded with lower vocabulary scores, number of utterances, and frequency of speech produced. Hart and Risley (1995) suggested that children need verbal ability to integrate themselves into social groups; therefore children who possess low language ability might be at risk for greater rejection. This hypothesis was consistent with preceding research conducted by Gertner, Rice, and Hadley (1994). Gertner et al.’s (1994) team organized preschoolers into several language groups (i.e. typical, language impaired, and second language learners) and then asked participating children to make positive POOR AND UNPOPULAR 5 and negative sociometric nominations of their peers. They found that limited language ability is associated with lower levels of social acceptance among peers. The authors proposed that children with greater language proficiency were the most popular among their peers because they understood the rules for cooperative play and how to interact with others within a larger context (Gertner et al. 1994). These spoken and unspoken rules accompany the development of another popular construct: Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind describes the ability an individual has to recognize and understand another person’s propensity to think, feel, or believe differently than he or she does. Like VA, ToM develops over time and appears to be intimately linked to aging, social interaction, parental input, and likely SES (Cutting & Dunn, 1999). Cutting and Dunn compared these variables to individual differences in ToM. Through their assessments, they observed that family background contributed to the development of ToM independently from the observed effects of VA and age. They also observed that VA impacted ToM independently of family background and age. To address how these elements impacted social status, Slaughter, Dennis, and Pritchard (2002) investigated ToM’s relationship to peer acceptance. Assessing ToM through a variety of false belief, conflicting emotions, and conflicting desire tasks (see Slaughter et al., 2002), they discovered that ToM was partially correlated to social preference when they controlled for age among their eldest group of children. From these results, the team concluded that ToM could influence the sociometric status of elementary-aged children even when they controlled for VA. Most recently, Miller, Reavis, and Avila (2018) tested these relationships in middle childhood. Their findings suggest that as children age and their ToM becomes more sophisticated, ToM becomes a stronger predictive factor of PR than VA and SES, especially among school aged girls. POOR AND UNPOPULAR 6 Despite what is known about PR, and the factors that might increase its likelihood, the majority of school-based intervention programs are either focused on resilience training for victims or anti-peer rejection programs (Mulvey, Boswell, & Zheng, 2017). These interventions produce controversial results. Mulvey et al. (2017) suggest the reason these programs are not effective is that they do not address social norms, biases, stereotypes, and prejudices which motivate initial PR. As intervention programs have shifted their attention from social skills training to targeting social hierarchies, vulnerable populations have been neglected. Not only are children of lower SES at risk in general, a recent study by Odgers and colleagues (2015) revealed that in mixed socioeconomic environments the adverse effects of PR intensify for children of all socioeconomic classes. To date, research on PR has explored the link between PR and ToM (Miller et al. 2018; Slaughter et al. 2002); however, no research team has investigated the implications of this relationship in a socioeconomically diverse environment. Considering that many American public schools and afterschool programs are socioeconomically diverse, these programs need to equip their vulnerable children with strategies that will reduce PR. Could training in false beliefs, conflicting desires and emotions, and/or perspective-taking help victims understand why they have been rejected, and how to avoid future rejection, thereby minimizing its long-term effects? Before this question can be answered, research must be done to better understand the ToM skills elementary aged children possess, and the predictive power ToM has on PR compared to other mediating factors. The primary goal of the present study was to examine the relationships between VA, ToM and PR and to compare the predictive powers VA and ToM have on PR in a socioeconomically diverse environment. The study aims to sample children from a POOR AND UNPOPULAR 7 socioeconomically diverse environment, i.e., a Boys and Girls Club of Indianapolis, and compare their levels of VA, ToM, and PR as a function of SES background, controlling for age using agematched peers across social strata. It is hypothesized that ToM will negatively predict PR to the same if not greater extent as VA’s predictive power on PR. Method Design Initially conceived as a nomothetic cross-sectional design, the study required upwards of thirty participants to generate statistical significance. Data collection, however, was disrupted by the COVID-19 international health crisis. All research with human participants was halted. As a result, the current study is limited to a set of five descriptive idiographic cases. Participants Seven participants (2 boys, 5 girls) were recruited to participate in this study. Due to the COVID-19 inter