Browsing by Author "Yaikin, Tamara"
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Publication Autism shapes social integration and reciprocity in elementary classrooms(2025) Soto-Icaza, Patricia; Oyarzún, Melanie; Yaikin, Tamara; Arcos-Polanco, Mirla; Candia Vallejos, Cristian; Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos; Billeke, PabloDuring childhood, schools are crucial environments for social interactions, making them ideal for evaluating the inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN). In particular, autistic children often face challenges in peer relationships, yet the impact of autism on social dynamics in schools is not well understood. To address this issue, we examined social dynamics within elementary schools. We hypothesized that, compared to their non-autistic peers, autistic children occupy more peripheral positions in social networks and engage less in reciprocal relationships. To test these hypotheses, we introduced a novel ecological approach using experimental game theory to quantify social integration and reciprocity among autistic children. Social networks were constructed for each classroom based on the children’s peer selections during a distributive game where they had to send tokens to their peers. Six elementary schools took part in this study. From these schools, 26 classrooms from first to fourth grade were included, comprising a total of 625 students aged 6 to 11. Among them, 464 were students without SEN, 143 were students with SEN excluding autism, and 18 were autistic students. Our analysis showed that autistic children and children with SEN were significantly less central and less involved in reciprocal peer relationships compared to children without SEN. Due to the small sample of autistic students, further research with greater statistical power is needed to clarify the specificity of the results. These findings highlight the need for support in promoting social inclusion while also emphasizing the importance of exploring the intersection of neurodevelopmental conditions and social dynamics.Publication Game theory in the classroom: low cooperative relationships identify bullying patterns in elementary schools(2024) Landaeta Torres, Víctor; Candia Vallejos, Cristian; Pulgar, Javier; Fábrega, Jorge; Varela, Jorge; Yaikin, Tamara; Monge, Cecilia; Rodríguez-Sickert, CarlosCooperation and bullying have a subtle yet important interaction that influences the social dynamics in elementary school classrooms. We investigate this interplay in a large sample of 1112 students across 47 public primary classrooms in Chile. Using a video game interface to create a dyadic, non-anonymous social dilemma, we map the cooperative social network within each classroom. In addition, we collect peer nomination data and use the Illinois Bullying Scale to categorize students as bullies, victims, or bully victims. Our results indicate that low levels of received cooperation significantly increase the likelihood of students being identified with the dual role of both bully and victim, known as the bully-victim profile. This negative relationship remains robust even after controlling for demographic and classroom context variables using multilevel regression models and is consistent when employing causal inference techniques such as statistical matching. We propose that the relationship between received cooperation and the bully-victim profile stems from the capacity of received cooperation to capture key factors influencing social relationships among students, such as popularity, prosociality, GPA, and aggressiveness. Our study contributes to the understanding of human interaction in educational settings and it offers a new framework for targeted interventions in primary education, providing insights for future educational policies and practices.Item Psychometric Properties of the Community Sense Scale in the Classroom in a sample of Chilean students(2022) Benavente, Mariavictoria; Fábrega Lacoa, Jorge; Alfaro, Jaime; Varela, Jorge J.; Chuecas, María Josefina; Yaikin, Tamara; Carrillo, GiselaIt is only recently that the sense of community in contexts other than the neighbor- hood has started to be studied, providing evidence on the associations between this variable in the school environment and various dimensions of integral development in childhood and adolescence. However, in the Latin American context, there are no validated scales to perform these measurements. The present study examined the structure, reliability and convergent validity of the Community Sense Scale in the Classroom (SCo-SC) proposed by Petrillo, Capone and Donizzetti. The participants of the study were 1065 students aged 10 to 12 from urban areas. The confrmatory factor analysis coincides with the authors’ proposal; however, due to the high homo- geneity indexes of the scale, a Bifactor analysis model was carried out. The results indicate that the SCo-SC is an adequate instrument to measure the Community Sense in the Classroom and that it is positively related to satisfaction with life and with school during childhood.