Aggression and Withdrawal as Social Schemas Underlying Children's Peer Perceptions

This study examined the ability of children of different ages to encode and retrieve from memory descriptions of aggressive and withdrawn behavior displayed by hypothetical peers. 90 children from the first, third, fifth, and seventh grades (aged 6-7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13, respectively) listened to behavioral descriptions of a hypothetical aggressive and a hypothetical withdrawn boy and subsequently reported their recollections for these descriptions. Differences across grade level were found in the number of behaviors correctly recalled for the withdrawn boy but not for the aggressive boy. At the first grade, children recalled fewer descriptions of withdrawn behavior than of aggressive behavior. However, recall for withdrawal increased significantly across grade level, such that at grades 5 and 7, subjects recalled more descriptions of withdrawn than of aggressive behavior. Such differences across grade level in children's ability to encode descriptions of withdrawn behavior into memory and subsequently to retrieve the descriptions accurately were interpreted as evidence of the emerging importance of social withdrawal as a social-cognitive schema underlying children's social perceptions.