Abstract

This dissertation describes the use of story stems in order to determine children's representations of relationships with mothers, teacher, and friends, and how these representations are related to mother- and teacher-rated social competence. Thirty preschool-aged children were administered the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT; Bretherton & Ridgeway, 1990), for both mothers and teachers, and the Preschool Friendship Story Completion Task (PFSCT; San Juan, 2006). Mothers and teachers were also asked to rate children's social competence using the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE; LaFrèniere & Dumas, 1995). Findings suggest that there are some associations between the three relationships, and that different aspects of these relationships different aspects of social competence. Children generally have similar, but not identical, working models of their relationships with mothers and teachers, characterized by higher levels in the security dimension and lower levels in the insecure dimensions, and tend to have conceptualizations of friendships characterized by both positive and negative themes. While child-teacher disorganization predicted mother-rated internalizing behaviors, child-teacher hyperactivation predicted teacher-rated internalizing behaviors, and child-friend absence of injury predicted teacher-rated externalizing behaviors. Findings from this study demonstrate the dynamic and interactive nature of children's representations of relationships with their mothers, teachers, and friends.