ISSN : 1229-0718
This study explored the developmental pattern of gender schema and its differentiation from middle childhood through middle adolescence in terms of multifactorial theory. The 4th(n=215), 6th(n=215), 7th(n=194), 9th(n=173) grade students were given 2 gender related measures, one for sex-typing of others and the other for sex-typing of self. The result showed that the egalitarian attitude increased across grades and both boys and girls gave more egalitarian responses on cross-sexual items. Boys endorsed more feminine items as self descriptive across grades but less masculine items between the 6th and 7th grade. Girls endorsed less feminine items between the 4th and 6th grade, endorsed more between the 6th and 7th grade and there was no significant change since then. Students were less likely to differentiate between masculine and feminine traits compared to occupations and activities in both measures. The correlation analysis showed a pattern that the egalitarian attitudes across domains were positively related with self endorsement of cross-sexual items. Among boys, gender attitude about others and self endorsement were separate components of gender schema. Among girls, self endorsement was further differentiated into masculinity and femininity. The result confirms the multifactorial theory of gender schema.
This research examines the causal explanations that 10 Korean-speaking children gave in everyday conversations recorded from 1;11 to 6;4 years of age. We analyze 4,957 codable explanations by focusing on the entity targeted for explanations(e. g., person, animal, object), the explanatory mode of causal reasoning(e. g., psychological, physical, biological knowledge), and interrelations between these elements. The results showed that children's explanations dealt with various entities(persons, animals, and objects) and incorporated diverse modes(physical, biological, psychological, and social-conventional reasoning). Children can also pair the entities with their appropriate explanatory modes. This means that children's explanation can be appropriately constrained by a flexible causal reasoning system. We conclude that children use distinguishably three basic reasoning systems as early as two years of age; physical, psychological, and biological systems. This can be interpreted in the sense that these reasoning systems might incorporate intriguing aspects of naive theories of physics, biology, and psychology.
The present study investigated children's understanding of the distinction between living and nonliving things and children's use of causal mechanisms. Children, aged 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 participated. They were given a series of questions, which measured children's understanding of several biological properties, including growth, nutrient intake, overeating(overwatering) and underfeeding(underwatering), factors that affect plant growth, reproduction, and reincarnation. The results showed that children understood only a small portion of the distinguishing criteria at age 3 and improved with age. Nonetheless, many(about 45%) 11-year olds do not attain all the criteria. Also, older children employed causal mechanisms more frequently and relied less on the perceptual properties and more on their categorical knowledge when making an explanation. Among biological properties, reproduction was easiest for children to grasp, which was followed by growth and nutrient intake, and then overfeeding/underfeeding and factors that affect plant growth and reincarnation. The animal category was the easiest to understand and there was no difference between the plant and nonliving thing categories. Three- and 5-year olds (or 5- and 7-year olds) were different from other age groups respectively, and 7-, 9-, and 11 year olds tended to be grouped together when their knowledge on biological properties were compared.
This study aims to examine longitudinally the relationships among false belief, early theory of mind, pretend play, and executive function, The subjects were 36 children(mean age: 34.58 months at the beginning) who were measured early theory of mind and pretend play at time 1(29-39 months), executive function at time 2(41-51months) and false belief and pretend play at time3(45-55 months). According to the results of partial correlations controlled age and PPVT and multiple regression analysis, the most important predictors for the false belief were decontextualization level 2 and 5 of pretend play at the time 1. Pretend play at time 3 was not correlated with the false belief. The early theory of mind tasks were correlated with executive function, but not with false belief. Pretend play at both time1 and time3 was not correlated with executive function. These results suggest that pretend play at young age would facilitate development of meta-representational theory of mind later.
The purpose of this study was two characteristics of early vocabulary development: the stability between 8 and 18 months of age, and the relationship between receptive and expressive vocabulary. The total of 393 mothers and their infants participated in this study. We visited the infants' home at 8, 12, 15, and 18 months in age. And the ability of infants' language was measured by the vocabulary checklist. Results are as follows: First, infant's vocabulary development showed stability of individual variation across ages. Especially, the correlation of same kind of vocabulary was higher than ones of different kind of vocabulary, and the stability was stronger, as age increased. Second, the number of vocabulary at 12 months could predict the language ability at 18 months. Finally, the receptive vocabulary could predict later the expressive vocabulary. The results implied that based on the number of vocabulary acquired in early infancy, we can expect and explain later language development.
This study examined the relationships among the adolescent-mother conflict, problem behavior, and the level of ego-identity development with middle and high school students. For this purpose three scales-adolescent-mother conflict scale, ego-identity scale and problem behavior scale-were used. Three way ANOVA revealed that the adolescents having much conflicts with mother had more problem behaviors and lower level of ego-identity development than their peers. Also the adolescents with the low level of ego-identity development had more problem behaviors than their counterparts. In addition, path analysis revealed that the adolescent-mother conflicts affected on the levels of ego-identity and in turn the ego-identity levels affected on the problems behavior as the postulated causal relation except high school male students. Interestingly the high school male students had the low level of ego-identity and engaged in the many problem behaviors.
The purpose of this study was to examine the causal relationship among parental belief about corporal punishment, parenting stress, corporal punishment and child psychological adjustment problems in accordance with parenting efficacy. The sample subjects were comprised of 253 preschool children's mothers participated in the study. Attitudes Toward Spanking/Slapping My Child Scale, Parenting Stress Index, Perceive Parenting Competence, Parenting corporal punishment Scale and Child Behavior Check List were used. The data were analyzed with Pearson's correlations by SPSS 11.0 program, Multi sample analysis based on the structural equation modeling and Path analysis by Amos 4.01 program. This study confirmed how to parental cognitive factors have influence on child adjustment problems mediated by corporal punishment. Specially, this study made clear the influence of corporal punishment on children's internalized problems(withdrawal) as well as externalized problems and the importance of moderating effect of parenting efficacy in corporal punishment process.
Understanding relation between a person and the object of his/her attention may be a critical component of social knowledge that contributes to social development. The present study directly investigated whether infants' comprehension of other person's attentional relation contribute to the development of coordinated joint attention. Fifty one 18-month-old infants participated. Their attentional states were coded using Adamson et el(1998)'s coding system in the context of their free play with their mothers and their comprehension of other's attentional relation was measured using selective gaze following procedure developed by Brooks and Meltzoff(2002). The results showed that infants attentional understanding is significantly related to the relative amount of their coordinated joint attention during the free play situation. In addition, the results showed that infants' understanding of other person's attentional relation is significantly related to the successful shift from supported to coordinated joint attentional states. Our results indicate one of the important individual characteristics of infants that mediates the development of coordinated joint attention during infancy.