Friendship
FRIENDSHIP STUDY
(FUNDED BY US NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT)
JUDY DUNN
Professor Judy Dunn has led a programme of research funded for the past decade by the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
This examines longitudinal links between children’s early friendships, family relationships and the development of social understanding and adjustment. Her current project includes 130 children from 15 schools in South London who are studied at home and with friends at school; measures include a battery of cognitive tasks and naturalistic observations at home and at school. Although this project largely continues Professor Dunn’s long-standing line of research, it provides another example of the added value of the Centre.
Dr Hughes’ interest in hard-to-manage pre-schoolers and their social relationships and socio-cognitive development led her and Professor Dunn to conduct a collaborative study that mirrors Professor Dunn’s study of normal development with a study of children with adjustment problems, a project funded by ESRC and is called the Hard-to-Manage Project.
REFERENCES
Dunn, J., & Hughes, C. (2001). "I got some swords and you're dead!". Violent fantasy, antisocial behaviour, friendship and moral sensibility in young children. Child Development, 72, 491-505.
Dunn, J., Cutting, A, & Fisher, N. (2002). Old friends, new friends: Predictors of children's perspectives on their friends at school. Child Development, 73(2), 621-635.
Cutting, A. L., & Dunn, J. (2002). The cost of understanding other people: Social cognition predicts young children's sensitivity to criticism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 849-860.