ISSN : 1229-0718
In this study, the developmental change of object permanence and and its correlation with exploration behavior, cognitive ability perceived by mothers and environmental variables, were investigated through longitudinal design. Subjects were 412 infants and their mothers. Infants were observed when they were 6, 8, 9, 10, and 11-month-old in their home environment. The object permanence by partial occlusion tasks developed progressively from 6-month-old infants to 9-month-old infants. There was not any progression from 9-month-old infants. The object permanence by complete occlusion tasks developed progressively from 8-month-old infants to 10-month-old infants and there was not significant progression from 10-month-old infants. However, The scores from partial occlusion tasks were higher than the scores from complete occlusion tasks in 8, 9, 10-month-old infants and there was no difference between them in 11-month-old infants. According to these results, we can conclude that the object permanence without displacement is completed by 11-month-old infants. The correlation between the scores of object permanence for 6- and 8-month-old and subsequent scores is lower than between the scores of objects permanence for 9-, 10-, and 11-month-old infants. From these results, it can be interpreted that the reliability of object permanence is acquired when infants are 9-month-old. The total scores of object permanence is correlated positively with exploration behavior and cognitive ability, and there is also positive correlation between exploration behavior and cognitive ability. There were scarce positive correlations between objective permanence and environmental variables and also between exploration behavior and environmental variables. However, there was positive correlation between cognitive ability and environmental variables.
This study examined the roles of event knowledge in the early development of planning skills. 120 4-, 5-, 6-year-olds reported either event representation or verbal plans for 2 familiar events, going mart shopping and birthday party. Transcription of the verbal protocols provided the data. Measures of interest included amount of information reported proportion of overlap in master script and plan content, and specific planning components in the event representation or planning condition. The results of this study were 6-year-olds reported more actions than 5-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the event representation condition, whereas 6-year-olds reported more actions than 5-year-olds, and 5-year-olds than 4-year-olds in the planning condition, With increasing age, children reported more information about specific planning activities in their plans then in their event representation, that is, the information reported by children who were reporting plans became more differentiated from the information reported by children who were recounting scripts. The implications of results are that young children's planning skills may emerge and develop in familiar event contexts in which children can use generalized event representation to support their cognitive activities involved in planning for real-world events.
This study examines the characteristics and problems found in the behaviors of Korean young children. We studied a total of 842 children (467 boys and 375 girls) in 6 day care centers and kindergartens located in Seoul: 50 aged below 3, 132 aged 4, and 280 aged 5. For instrument, K-BASC (Korean Behavior Assessment System for Children) was used which was adapted and validated by Lee et al.(2003) from BASC (Behavior Assessment System for Children) developed by Kamphaus and Reynolds (1992) to evaluate behaviors of young children aged between 2.5 and 5. Results show that mothers' educational level is positively correlated with children's attention problem and social skills. Children of working mothers showed higher social skills. First-born children showed more problems of depression, anxiety, aggression, and internalization. In terms of gender, boys were found having more problems of aggression, hyperactivity, externalization, and attention problem, while girls showed more problems of depression and atypical behavior. In terms of age, older children showed less problems of aggression, externalization, depression, atypical behavior, hyperactivity, and withdrawl. For the correlations among the attributes of problems, depression was found highly associated with internalization and externalization among both boys and girls. In particular, the attribute of hyperactivity was significantly associated with externalization. About 3 to 4% of the children were found needing special intervention for their behaviors in the future.
The purpose of this study was to investigate categories of semantic relations between words in the early multiword utterances in order to examine the semantic relations' development of Korean-Chinese bilingual children and difference with monolingual of semantic relations categories. The subjects of this study were 35 children from 1 to 3 years of age and divided two groups using Brown's I stage and II stage. Each child's spontaneous natural speech during interaction with his/her caregiver was videotaped for about 30 minutes in which the same toys were provided as those at the nursery school attended by the child. The children's spontaneous utterances were transcribed and analysed for the semantic relations using Retherford's(1987) 20 semantic roles and KCLA(Korean Computerized Language Analysis 2.0, 2000). According the semantic roles, we analysed children's two-unit and three-unit semantic relations, then analyzed percentage of children and ranking of categories in terms of the frequency of occurrence and compared this data with studies of monolingual children. The result showed that children of II stage more used almost semantic relations than of I stage, especially in three-unit semantic relations children of II stage more frequently used than children of I stage. This result indicated that there was a similar developmental sequence in the several semantic categories. Comparing this data with monolingual children identified that bilingual children's development of relation delayed than monolingual. So, this study is consistent with De Houwer(1995) and Gathercole(in press).
The early lexical development was examined with 1138 Korean infants between 18 and 36 months of age. The results show that Korean infants had 100 words around 20~21 months. The vocabulary spurt was observed between 23 and 24 months. Also they had two times more nouns than predicates(verbs and adjectives). The proportion of grammatical function words was increased with vocabulary size. However the acquisition order of function words which represent location was somewhat different from that of English and Italian.
This study examined the effects of the gender and the gender role identity on the interruptions(negative and positive) and the amount of talks in conversations. 44 male-female pairs of college students had dialogued each other about a given subject in the experimental stituation. Using 2x4 factorial design 9 hypotheses were formed. Planned analysis revealed that masculine man and woman and androgynous man used more negative interruptions than feminine and undifferentiated man and woman. Also woman used the more positive interruptions and talked more than man regardless of the person's gender role identity.
The present study was to investigate how children's understanding of illness causality changes with age. Three-, 5-, 7-, 9-, & 11-year-olds(16 at each age) were tested with a series of questions, which aimed at examining children's understanding of the causes of colds and stomachaches, the importance of physical fitness in susceptibility to illness, and the role of immanent justice in getting sick. The results showed that children's understanding about illness increased with age. Nevertheless, knowledge concerning stomachaches increased relatively slowly with age, whereas a belief in social causes expressed in the form of immanent justice changed rather dramatically with age into a belief in biological causes. The results also showed an increase with age in biological understanding of germs as causes of illness. Not many of 3- and 5-year-olds(<5%) explained illness in terms of germs as causes of illness, while 16% of 7-year-olds revealed understanding of germs as causes of illness and about 50% of 9- and 11-year-olds were quite capable of explaining the role of germs in getting sick. However, as opposed to Carey's claim that children before age 10 tend to interpret illness as a punishment for naughtiness, less than 30% of 3- and 5-year-olds considered immanent justice as a cause of getting ill.
This study investigated the role of Korean phonological processing skills in English word reading and vocabulary knowledge in 6th grade children. The children were tested in Korean syllable and phoneme deletion, English syllable and phoneme deletion, short-term memory span, and naming speed measures, as well as English word reading and vocabulary. Most tasks except naming speed were significantly correlated with English word recognition and vocabulary. In regression analyses, English phoneme and syllable deletion, short-term memory of digit span, and Korean phoneme deletion significantly predicted English word reading; and English and Korean phoneme deletion as well as digit span predicted English vocabulary. These results suggest that Korean phoneme awareness is associated with English word reading and vocabulary knowledge. These findings support the transfer of phonological processing skills from first to second languages.