Children's Awareness of Their Popularity and Social Acceptability.

Children in grades one through six evaluated same-sex classmates in terms of sociometric nominations (three children you "like best") and sociometric ratings (a six-point scale ranging from "like very much" to "like very little"). In addition, each child performed a recursive version of each of the tasks (i.e., "Who do you think nominated you?"; "What rating do you think that each classmate gave you?"). Based on peer nominations and ratings, children were grouped into five social status categories: popular, average, neglected, controversial, and rejected. Significant main effects of status were found when actual and expected nominations and ratings were compared. Both ratings and nominations were underestimated by popular children, accurately estimated by average children, and overestimated by rejected children. Neglected children were accurate in their perceptions of peer ratings but not nominations, whereas controversial children were more accurate on nominations than ratings. Fifth and sixth grade girls were significantly more accurate than any other group, according to results of a signal detection analysis of the nomination data. Rejected boys were significantly less accurate than any other group. It is concluded that social status was related to social recursive thinking ability, and this relationship was the clearest among subjects in the extreme sociometric groups. (Author/RH)