Ninety-four low- and middle-income preschoolers (48 boys, 46 girls)
were recruited from two sites in a large southwestern city.
Children's positive attributions of peer intent, social
problem-solving decisions, and attributions of peers' feelings about
the provocation were evaluated from individual interviews. In addition,
children's anger perception accuracy and their global emotion
situation knowledge were assessed. Teachers and their assistants reported
on the children's social competence, internalizing and externalizing
behavior, and the degree to which children were physically and
relationally victimized. Social competence was a negative predictor of
relational and physical victimization, and externalizing behavior was a
positive predictor of both types of victimization. Anger perception
accuracy was negatively related to physical victimization, and global
emotion situation knowledge and attributions of sorrow to provoking peers
were positive predictors. Results support a conceptual framework that
emphasizes the importance of social and emotion-related social cognitive
variables for understanding young children's peer-related
victimization.The authors thank the
children and families for their participation and the preschool teachers
for their cooperation. Thanks are also due to the many undergraduate and
graduate students who helped with this research. Special thanks to
Kimberly Estep and Courtney Hunter for their help with data collection and
coding.