Browsing by Author "Bookhout, Megan K."
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Item Children’s Social Information Processing Predicts Both Their Own and Peers’ Conversational Remarks(Developmental Psychology, 2022-11-22) Hubbard, Julie A.; Bookhout, Megan K.; Zajac, Lindsay; Moore, Christina C.; Dozier, MaryThe goal of the current study was to investigate whether children’s social information processing (SIP) predicts their conversations with peers, including both their remarks to peers and peers’ remarks to them. When children (N = 156; 55% male; United States; Representation by Race: 60% African American, 18% Mixed race, 15% European American, 7% Other; Representation by Latino/a Ethnicity: 22% Latino/a, 78% Not Latino/a; Mincome = $39,419) were 8 years old, we assessed their aggressive and prosocial SIP using the Social Information Processing Application (SIP-AP). When children were 9 years old, they participated in playgroups typically consisting of four same-sex unfamiliar children who interacted in a round-robin format. Each dyad completed a five-minute frustration task and a five-minute planning task. Observers coded children’s verbalizations into six prosocial categories (Suggest, Agree, Solicit Input, Ask, Encourage, State Personal) and four antisocial categories (Command, Disagree, Discourage, Aggress). Children with higher aggressive SIP made more antisocial and fewer prosocial statements, whereas children with higher prosocial SIP made more prosocial and fewer antisocial statements. Furthermore, children with higher aggressive SIP elicited more antisocial and fewer prosocial statements from peers, whereas children with higher prosocial SIP elicited more prosocial and fewer antisocial statements from peers. Children’s antisocial and prosocial remarks mediated relations between their aggressive SIP and peers’ subsequent antisocial and prosocial remarks. Findings are discussed in terms of: (a) the use of SIP to predict more subtle social behaviors in children’s social interaction, and (b) cycles of social interactions that maintain and reinforce children’s SIP patterns. Public Significance Statement: Findings of the current study suggest that children who think more aggressively about social interactions speak to their peers using more negative and fewer positive statements. Peers respond using similar language, and their responses help to maintain children’s aggressive thinking patterns.Item Emotion transmission in peer dyads in middle childhood(Child Development, 2024-03-09) Hubbard, Julie A.; Moore, Christina C.; Zajac, Lindsay; Bookhout, Megan K.; Dozier, MaryThis study investigated emotion transmission among peers during middle childhood. Participants included 202 children (111 males; race: 58% African American, 20% European American, 16% Mixed race, 1% Asian American, and 5% Other; ethnicity: 23% Latino(a) and 77% Not Latino(a); Mincome = $42,183, SDincome = $43,889; Mage = 9.49; English-speaking; from urban and suburban areas of a mid-Atlantic state in the United States). Groups of four same-sex children interacted in round-robin dyads in 5-min tasks during 2015–2017. Emotions (happy, sad, angry, anxious, and neutral) were coded and represented as percentages of 30-s intervals. Analyses assessed whether children's emotion expression in one interval predicted change in partners' emotion expression in the next interval. Findings suggested: (a) escalation of positive and negative emotion [children's positive (negative) emotion predicts an increase in partners' positive (negative) emotion], and (b) de-escalation of positive and negative emotion (children's neutral emotion predicts a decrease in partners' positive or negative emotion). Importantly, de-escalation involved children's display of neutral emotion and not oppositely valenced emotion.Item The importance of weight-related victimization in adolescent obesity(University of Delaware, 2018) Bookhout, Megan K.The goal of this study was to test a longitudinal serial mediation model in which weight-related peer victimization mediates the associations between obesity and a string of negative outcomes across the span of middle childhood (4th-5th grade) to adolescence (7th-8th grade). We hypothesized that youth with higher BMI are more likely to experience weight-related victimization and that this victimization sets off a chain of events including increased negative body cognitions, increased internalizing symptoms, and increased negative health behaviors which ultimately feeds back to adversely impact youth’s BMI. Within this goal, we examined bidirectional effects within pairs of constructs as well as the full model. ☐ During the 2013-2014 academic year, data were collected through classroom visits in fall (T1) and spring (T2) from 1440 students in 74 4th and 5th grade classrooms in 9 schools. At T1, data were collected through parent report on participants’ BMI. At T1 and T2, data were collected via child self report on weight-related victimization, negative body cognitions (body dissatisfaction, overconcern with weight) and internalizing symptoms (depression, anxiety) and via teacher report on internalizing symptoms (somatization, withdrawal, school avoidance). Data for the third time point (T3) were collected from 150 of these participants now in 7th or 8th grade. At T3, data were collected during home visits via self report on weight-related victimization, both negative body cognitions, all five internalizing symptoms, and two negative health behaviors (disordered eating behavior, physical activity). ☐ Analyses of bidirectional relations between T1 and T3 revealed significant cross-lag paths: 1) for both genders, positive bidirectional relations between BMI and weight-related victimization; and 2) for boys, earlier overconcern with weight predicting later anxiety, as well as positive bidirectional relations between overconcern with weight and somatization. No significant mediation effects emerged for models including negative body cognitions and internalizing symptoms. Auxiliary analyses revealed that weight-related victimization mediated the link between BMI and both physical activity and disordered eating. The importance of these findings on research on weight-related victimization and on clinical practice is discussed.Item Individual differences and dyadic processes in conversations with peers in middle childhood(Social Development, 2022-09-01) Moore, Christina C.; Hubbard, Julie A.; Bookhout, Megan K.; Zajac, Lindsay; Dozier, MaryThe goal of the current study was to investigate the contribution of both trait-like individual differences and dyadic processes to the content of children's conversations. Fifty-two groups typically consisting of four same-sex unfamiliar nine-year-old children (N = 202) interacted in all possible dyads, resulting in six dyads per group. Each dyad completed a 5-min frustration task and a 5-min planning task. Observers coded children's verbalizations into 10 categories and further summed these categories into prosocial (suggest, agree, solicit input, ask, encourage, state personal) and antisocial (command, disagree, discourage, aggress) verbalizations, resulting in 24 variables (12 per task). Across both tasks, Social Relations Model analyses provided evidence of the role of both individual differences [significant effects for actor variance (15 of 24 variables), actor-actor correlations, and intrapersonal correlations] and dyadic processes [significant effects for partner variance (4 of 24 variables), relationship variance (18 of 24 variables), dyadic reciprocity correlations (10 of 24 variables), and interpersonal correlations] in children's conversations with peers.Item The importance of both individual differences and dyadic processes in children’s emotion expression(Applied Developmental Science, 2023-01-06) Hubbard, Julie A.; Moore, Christina C.; Zajac, Lindsay; Marano, Elizabeth; Bookhout, Megan K.; Dozier, MaryAlthough children display strong individual differences in emotion expression, they also engage in emotional synchrony or reciprocity with interaction partners. To understand this paradox between trait-like and dyadic influences, the goal of the current study was to investigate children’s emotion expression using a Social Relations Model (SRM) approach. Playgroups consisting typically of four same-sex unfamiliar nine-year-old children (N = 202) interacted in a round-robin format (6 dyads per group). Each dyad completed two 5-minute tasks, a challenging frustration task and a cooperative planning task. Observers coded children’s emotions during the tasks (happy, sad, angry, anxious, neutral) on a second-by-second basis. SRM analyses provided substantial evidence of both the trait-like nature of children’s emotion expression (through significant effects for actor variance, multivariate actor-actor correlations, and multivariate intrapersonal correlations) and the dyadic nature of their emotion expression (through significant effects for partner variance, relationship variance, dyadic reciprocity correlations, and multivariate interpersonal correlations).