The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among mother's personality, preschooler's temperament, maternal involvement behavior, and preschoolers social competence as well as maternal involvement behavior as a mediator in the rela...
The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among mother's personality, preschooler's temperament, maternal involvement behavior, and preschoolers social competence as well as maternal involvement behavior as a mediator in the relation of preschoolers' temperament and mother's personality to preschoolers' social competence. The subjects of this study were a total of 301 preschoolers(157 boys and 144 girls) and their mothers living in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do. Data were collected by using four kinds of questionnaires regarding temperament, personality, involvement behavior, and social competence. All of the questionnaires were rated by the preschoolers' mothers. Data were analyzed by t-test, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and multiple regressions.
The major results of this study were summarized as follows:
First, the lower preschoolers' activity level and maternal neuroticism were, the higher the preschoolers' interpersonal adjustment was. And the lower the preschoolers' shyness and perceptual sensitivity were, the higher the preschoolers' popularity/leadership was. Also the higher the preschoolers' activity level and perceptual sensitivity were, and the lower the preschoolers' shyness was, preschoolers showed more social participation.
Second, maternal advice & support was positively related to preschoolers' interpersonal adjustment. And as the maternal advice & support was higher and monitoring was lower, the level of preschoolers' popularity/leadership was higher. Also as the level of maternal advice & support was higher, the level of preschoolers' social participation was higher.
Third, maternal extroversion was positively related to mother's orchestration. Also as the level of activity level was lower and preschoolers' perceptual sensitivity was higher, mothers showed more advice & support. And as the level of perceptual sensitivity was higher and maternal neuroticism was higher, mothers showed more monitoring.
Lastly, maternal advice & support was a partial mediator between maternal neuroticism and preschoolers' interpersonal adjustment. The maternal advice & support functioned as a partial mediator between preschoolers' perceptual sensitivity and popularity/leadership. Also the maternal advice & support functioned as a partial mediator between preschoolers' perceptual sensitivity and social participation. And maternal monitoring was a partial mediator between preschoolers' perceptual sensitivity and social participation.
This study showed the influences of preschoolers' temperament, maternal personality, and involvement behavior regulation on social competences. In addition, maternal involvement behavior was found to function as a mediator between preschoolers' temperament, maternal personality, and preschoolers' social competence. Therefore maternal involvement behavior is identified as one of the integral factors to predict preschoolers' social competence.