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Abstract
Considerable evidence tells us that ¿being liked¿ and ¿being disliked¿ are related
to social competence, but evidence concerning friendships and their developmental
significance is relatively weak. The argument is advanced that the developmental implications
of these relationships cannot be specified without distinguishing between having friends,
the identity of one's friends, and friendship quality. Most commonly, children are
differentiated from one another in diagnosis and research only according to whether
or not they have friends. The evidence shows that friends provide one another with
cognitive and social scaffolding that differs from what nonfriends provide, and having
friends supports good outcomes across normative transitions. But predicting developmental
outcome also requires knowing about the behavioral characteristics and attitudes of
children's friends as well as qualitative features of these relationships.