Playing by the Rules: Early Childhood Social Development
Project Team
The first five years of life are a period of rapid development for social skills and brain function. However, there has been a paucity of data available to inform our understanding of early social development.
This project builds on a multiyear effort to collect and analyze social network data to help illuminate how sociality and social cohesion develop among young children. Through noninvasive video recording of daily classroom behaviors of preschoolers, the team analyzed patterns of cooperation and conflict among children in natural states of play to examine how children learn the “rules” of being social.
The ultimate goal of this longitudinal study is to examine how early childhood social interaction affects long-term physical and mental health outcomes.
Social Network Dynamics and Social Development among Preschoolers
Poster by Ava Raffel, Carrie Wang, Elissa Harris, Jaden Snyder, Kelsey Zhong, Mihika Rajvanshi, Rhayoung Park, Tom Wolff, Margaret O'Brien, Michael S. Gaffrey and Craig Rawlings