Children's Groups

Peer groups constitute the primary source of children's socialization outside of the family. Competence in the peer group is critical for many aspects of children's development, including cognitive development and school achievement as well as social, emotional, and personality development. Within their groups, children are more or less accepted by their peers, more or less visible, more or less dominant, and more or less connected to other group members. These individual differences in peer group experiences are associated with different socioemotional outcomes later in development. As a result, much of the scholarship concerning children's peer groups has been devoted to measuring and explaining the sources of individual differences in children's integration into the peer group and the developmental consequences of these differences. More recent and ...