Abstract: Children begin to continually improve their self-evaluation ability through social comparison during middle childhood. Previous studies indicated that there is no agreement on whether perception of peer acceptance differs when children are rating a same-gender or opposite-gender peer group. Furthermore, some studies indicated that children develop more accurate and positive bias perceptions of themselves with increase grade in middle childhood. This issue is important in part because there might be an association between children’s perception of peer acceptance and their social withdraw behaviors. Therefore, the main goals of the present study were to investigate gender and grade differences in peer acceptance perception accuracy in middle childhood, and to explore associations between these perceptions and two types of social withdrawal (active isolation and passive withdrawal). The study sample was selected by a random cluster sampling method, comprised of students from 3rd grade to 6th grade in an elementary school in Wuhan City, China. A total of 498 students (276 boys and 222 girls) completed the questionnaires. The children in the current study were asked to rate how much they liked their classmates and how much they would be liked by each classmate, and children also were asked to complete the Self-Perceived Social Competence (SPSC) measure and the Revised Class Play questionnaire. Accuracy of peer acceptance was indexed by the mean difference (absolute values) between pairs of predicted and received ratings, and bias of peer acceptance was measured by standardized residuals derived by regressing children’s responses to the Social Acceptance Subscale of the SPSC onto peer acceptance ratings. F-test was performed to examine sex or grade differences on the variables, and multilevel regression analyses were conducted for explored the association among variables. The results showed that: (1) Higher grade children displayed more accurate peer acceptance perception (including perceptions towards both genders) of peer acceptance than that of lower grade children. (2) There was no gender difference in the accuracy of perceptions of peer acceptance by same-gender groups, but girls in fourth grade, compared to boys in fourth grade, displayed more accurate perceptions of peer acceptance by the opposite-gender group. (3) Same-gender and opposite-gender accuracy of peer acceptance significantly positively predicted both active isolation and passive withdrawal behaviors; peer acceptance perception bias significantly negatively predicted passive withdrawal, but not active isolation behaviors. In terms of the study’s unique contribution to the literature on the first time to used Chinese sample to investigate accuracy and bias of children's perceptions of peer acceptance, and the first time to explore the association between two types of social withdrawal and them.

Key words: Peer acceptance, Accuracy, Bias, Active isolation, Passive withdrawal

摘要： 以小学三年级至六年级的儿童为被试，探讨同伴接纳知觉准确性的年级和性别差异，同时考察同伴接纳知觉准确性及偏差对社交退缩行为的预测作用。儿童完成同伴评定、知觉评定、社交自我知觉和班级戏剧量表。结果表明：（1）随着年级的升高，儿童的同伴接纳知觉越来越准确；儿童的同性同伴接纳知觉准确性不存在显著的性别差异；四年级男生的异性同伴接纳知觉准确性显著低于女生；（3）同伴接纳知觉准确性显著正向预测安静退缩和活跃退缩；同伴接纳知觉偏差显著负向预测安静退缩，但对活跃退缩不具有显著的预测效应。

关键词: 同伴接纳，知觉准确性，知觉偏差，活跃退缩，安静退缩