In addition, Robert Sternberg emphasizes the role of environmental context on intelligence, and he argued that ��intelligent behavior involves adaptation�� to environment [12, page 203]. He also suggested that social competence is a general and adaptive skill in Western Y27632 culture. In general, a positive social environment with good social supports favors that development of social competence.Harter [13] in an intensive review of the concept of self concluded that the self served as antecedents of cognitive and social construction in children. It is common to classify the self into two categories: I-self (i.e., self as subject) and Me-self (self as object). McDevitt and Ormrod [12] suggested a few ways to enhance the sense of self of students.

Two of the strategies are (a) To ��promote success on academic, social and physical tasks�� (page 454): teachers and parents should give challenging tasks and assignments to students and should provide support and guidance for them to achieve. (2) To ��focus students’ attention on their improvement rather than on how others are performing�� (page 456): in the development of positive self-concepts, it is more productive and constructive to help students to make their own progress and improvement instead of comparing their achievements with the peers.In summary, both the social environment (whether the relationship with parents, peers, teachers, and others is good or not, and whether the social supports provided by these people are adequate or not) and the self (whether the concept of self is positive, stable, and clear or not) are essential antecedents of social competence.

6. Relationship between Social Competence and Adolescent Developmental OutcomesProsocial behavior is frequently used as a measure of social competence [14]. Adolescents with a high level of competence exhibit high frequency of prosocial behavior. In addition, social competence is positively associated with academic achievement. Wentzel [15] found that children who had high peer status and displayed prosocial and responsible behaviors are usually high academic achievers. In a study of 2,862 Hong Kong Chinese adolescents, Ma et al. [11] also found that prosocial behavior tended to have a positive relationship with academic achievement.Social competence appears to be associated with emotional competence, especially in girls [16]. Social skills and social effectiveness are positively related to emotion knowledge in children. According to a review by Saarni and her colleagues, they concluded that ��children GSK-3 who demonstrated more complex emotion understanding were more accepted by their peers�� [16, page 257].