Xinyin Chen

Barry H. Schneider

Doran C. French

This book responds to the absence of a comprehensive consideration of the implications of culture for children's peer relationships. Although research in this field has burgeoned in recent years, cultural issues have often been overlooked. The chapters tap such issues as the impact of social circumstances and cultural values on peer relationships, culturally prescribed socialization patterns and processes, emotional experience and regulation in peer interactions, children's social behaviors in peer interactions, cultural aspects of friendships, and peer influences on social and school adjustment in cultural context. The authors incorporate into their discussions findings from research programs using multiple methodologies, including both qualitative (e.g., interviewing, ethnographic and observational) and quantitative (e.g., large scale surveys, standardized questionnaires) approaches, based on a wide range of ages of children in cultures from East to West and from South to North (Asia, South America, the Mid-East, Southern Europe, and ethnic groups in the US).

Peer Relationships in Cultural Context

An Applied Psychologist's Initiation to the Study of Gifted Children My interest in the subject matter of this book, the peer relations of gifted children, intensified enormously as result of my' involvement with one gifted child during my days as a school psychologist. At that time, I served a number of schools in a prosperous suburb. I spent most of my time working with children with behavioral and learning disorders. I received very few requests to assist gifted youngsters and their teachers, perhaps because, at that point, I was not very sensitive to their needs. One autumn I was involved in something from which I derived a great deal of satisfaction-helping the teachers of a very advanced retarded boy with Down's syndrome maintain himself in a regular first-grade class. In retrospect, the achievements of this student, Jeff, would have justified my calling him exceptionally bright, given the limits of his endowment. I was interrupted from my observation of Jeff's success in class by a phone call from another school, one to which I had not previously been summoned. I was asked to discuss the case of an intellectually gifted child who was bored, moody, difficult, and disliked by those around him.

Barry H. Schneider

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