Title: Examining Factors That Facilitate Young Children’s Social Connections: An Experimental Approach
Legend: (a) Pairs of 5- to 11-year-olds were randomly assigned to meet for the first time over Zoom. Initial encounters were accompanied by no adult support (Baseline condition), adult support that scaffolded children’s passive participation (Passive Experimental condition), or adult support that scaffolded children’s active participation (Active Experimental condition). Half of the pairs were composed of same-gender children and the other half were composed of different-gender children. (The image uses stock photos, not faces of real participants.) (b) Adult coders rated pairs’ social connection during a later free interaction period. Pairs in the experimental conditions were more connected than those in the Baseline condition. Same-gender pairs were more connected than different-gender pairs in the Baseline and Passive Experimental conditions but not in the Active Experimental condition.
Citation: King, R. A., Fukuda, E., Shutts, K., & Kinzler, K. D. (2025). Examining factors that facilitate young children’s social connections: An experimental approach. Developmental psychology, 10.1037/dev0002003. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0002003
Abstract: Disciplines across the social and behavioral sciences have documented the critical role of early peer connections in children’s development, yet mechanisms facilitating these connections have not been tested in controlled laboratory settings. The present experiment manipulated the context in which unacquainted pairs of children interacted for the first time. We randomly assigned 288 5- to 11-year-old U.S. children (girls: n = 142, boys: n = 145, nonbinary: n = 1; American Indian or Alaska Native: n = 2, Asian or Asian American: n = 24, Black or African American: n = 8, Hispanic or Latino: n = 17, White or Caucasian: n = 200, Multiracial: n = 33, other: n = 2, not provided: n = 2) to interact in pairs with a same- or different-gender partner who matched their age. Randomly assigned peer interactions occurred in one of three conditions: interaction without support (baseline condition) or interaction preceded by adult support that scaffolded children’s active (active experimental condition) or passive (passive experimental condition) participation in a self-disclosure activity. Adult coders rated children’s connections during the interaction, and children later rated their feelings about their partner. Results revealed that the experimental conditions facilitated children’s connections relative to baseline and eliminated gender ingroup favoritism in children’s connections; the active experimental condition was particularly effective relative to the passive experimental condition. With its focus on testing mechanisms of connection, this research introduces a new experimental approach that is capable of informing theories and practices surrounding the formation of young children’s peer connections. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
Investigator: Kristin Shutts, PhD
About the Lab: The Shutts’ lab interests lie in the origins of object cognition and social cognition. It has a long-standing interest in how infants and children perceive and categorize objects, as well as a more recent, and now primary, interest in how infants and children apprehend their social world. They are particularly interested in the development of social categories and preferences in infancy and early childhood. When do children come to see themselves and others as belonging to different social categories (e.g., gender, ethnicity, social class), which distinctions matter most to children, and how does this change over development and a result of immersion in a particular culture? What mechanisms support the development of social categories and preferences, and what are the cognitive and affective consequences of children’s earliest social category formation?