Abstract
Until recently children’s social competence has been defined as children’s ability to accomplish their goals in interaction with others (e.g., Combs & Slaby, 1977; O’Malley, 1977). Thus, for example, researchers have studied the ways in which children join groups (Corsaro, 1981; Putallaz, 1983; Putallaz & Gottman, 1981) or the ways in which they maintain relationships and resolve interpersonal conflicts (e.g., Asher & Renshaw, 1981). This approach to defining and studying social competenc, although valuable and productive, neglects an important aspect of the social world, namely, that social situations are inherently ill-defined and unstructured (Greene, 1976; Renshaw & Asher, 1983) and that a fundamental task confronting a child is to discern which goals should be pursued in social situations.
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Parkhurst, J.T., Asher, S.R. (1985). Goals and Concerns. In: Lahey, B.B., Kazdin, A.E. (eds) Advances in Clinical Child Psychology. Advances in Clinical Child Psychology, vol 8. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9820-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9820-2_6
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