ISSN : 1229-0718
This study examined the effects of antonym and synonym generation on memory performance of elementary school student. The subjects were first- third- and fifth grade elementary school children. Each subject was shown visually a list of 20 words for 12 second per word via computer. For the antonym generation condition, subjects read aloud target words and generated antonym related target words. For the synonym generation condition, subjects generated synonym and other procedure was identical to those given in antonym generation condition. For the control condition, subjects merely read aloud target words. And then after subjects spent 30 seconds solving digit symbol, they were required to recall target words. Results showed that generation effect increased with grade, and antonym generation was the most useful in the first grade children and synonym generation was supreme effect in the fifth grade children. These results were interpreted in terms of semantic organization.
Rejection sensitivity is a disposition that a person readily perceive and overact to social rejection with anxiety and anger. Preliminary surveys and a main study was done to select rejective situations for measuring Korean children's rejection sensitivity. Data were gathered from 5th to 6th 355 graders attending at an elementary school in Ulsan city. In preliminary survey using twelve rejective situations in Downey's(1998) Children's Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire(CRSQ), it was found that most of Korean children would not expect rejection in several situations of CRSQ. Additional thirteen rejective situations for Korean children were constructed based on small group discussions about children's stressful life events. In main study, among 25 situations made up from CRSQ and preliminary survey, twelve rejective situations were selected that discriminated high rejection-sensitivity group from low rejection-sensitivity group based on rejection-relevant emotion and anticipated rejection. Two factors were found on selected 12 situations by factor analysis.
Epistemological understanding is a personal belief about the nature of knowledge (what is knowledge?) and the process of knowing (how does an individual understand the world?). The purpose of the study was to investigate epistemological understanding, especially epistemological thinking about the subjective and objective aspects of knowing, across various judgment domains (aesthetics, value, social world, and physical world) and to see if epistemological thinking varies depending on the grade level and students' fields of study. For this purpose, middle school students in 8th grade, high school students in 10th and 12th grades, and college sophomores participated in the study. The students completed the Epistemological Thinking Assessment (ETA). To summarize the results, the social domain appeared at a higher epistemological level than did the physical domain, indicating that students across grade levels had a more sophisticated epistemological understanding in the social domain than in the physical domain. Significant correlations were found between value judgment and knowledge domains and also between social and physical domains, but the correlations were not very strong, indicating that development does not occur evenly. As predicted, there was a general developmental pattern toward evaluativist thinking in the social domain; but in the physical domain, both absolutist and evaluativist thinking increased as the grade level increased. There were no grade differences in aesthetics and value judgment domains. Also, no significant differences were found in epistemological thinking by students' fields of study. Based on the results, domain-specific aspects of epistemological thinking and the importance of education in its development were discussed.
This study examined the relationship between death fear and death acceptance with the college students and the sixties. Using multidimensional fear of death scale and death acceptance scale, It was clear that women were significantly more afraid of death than were men, but the sixties were necessarily not less afraid of death than were the twenties. Also women were significantly more accepting of life after death and of death as an escape from life than were men. The sixties were significantly accepting of death as an escape and of death as a natural end than were the twenties. Interestingly although accepting death, death was the object of fear in all subjects. By cluster analysis two clusters, with significant differences in death fear, were discriminated according to death acceptance except the sixties women.
Previous studies have shown that imitation not only increases liking and rapport between the interactants, but also enhances demonstrator's pro-social helping behavior toward the mimicker and other people in general. This study has been done to test social and emotional effects of imitation on the child participants. To adapt previous studies which were originally for adults, children of ages from 9 to 11 were chosen to participate in this study. The results of this study are as follows. First, repeated testing using the modified IOS scale before and after the trial showed the scores of the children in the no-mimicry condition increased more after the trials compared to those of the children in the mimicry condition. Second, the children in the mimicry condition retrieved the pen dropped by the experimenter more than the children in the no-mimicry condition. Third, the children in the no-mimicry condition donated more to the needy than the children in the mimicry condition did. The results above show that age plays a role in the effect mimicry has on people. Although mimicry has an effect of triggering feelings of liking and establishing of a rapport with another person in adults leading to increased likelihood of charity towards the mimicker, in children, who are still in development phase of conventional morality, the high/low authority experimenter variable which is affected by imitation may play a role in the outcome.
This study examined how children's gender and attachment security affect children's abilities to understand emotions. Participants of this study were 59 four-or five-year-old preschool children who live in Seoul and its vicinity. Children's attachment security was identified using a Korean version of the Attachment Story Completion Task, and the Puppet Task was administered to the children at school settings. The Puppet Task consists of three subscales: emotion recognition, emotion perspective taking, and the causal attribution of emotion. Results showed that girls showed higher emotion understanding than did boys in emotion perspective taking tasks. Also, securely attached children identified others' facial expressions better than did insecurely attached children. Most importantly, the gender differences in emotion understanding was significant only in insecurely attached children, but not in securely attached children. The results were discussed within the framework of attachment theory, and gender-specific patterns of the socialization of emotion.
This study is conducted to explore the modalities of relational selves according to contexts. The Relational Self Scale(RSS), Family Relationship Scale and Social Provision Scale were administered for 144 Korean mothers. The results are summed up as follows: First, mothers show different pictures of the relational self according to objects of relation, and there are significant differences among the six factors of the relational self. On the factors of 'perceived support from relation' and 'over-dependency', mothers display the highest score in relations with their children, followed by their spouse, their parents' home, and the family of their husband. On the factors of 'agency', and 'empathy-care' they show the highest score in relations with their children, and similar patterns with their spouse and their parents' home. When they are connected with the family of their husband, mothers display the highest score in the areas of 'avoidance of relation'. On the other hand, they show the lowest score in relations with their parent's home on the 'consciousness of others'. Secondly, the relational self exhibits different patterns according to economic contexts, such as mother's status of employment and monthly household income level. Thirdly, mothers show different patterns of the relational self according to psychological contexts, which include quality of family relationship and degree of social support. These results support the multi-dimensionality of the relational self. This study has significance in that it can give suggestions as to how to describe and explain developmental contexts by clarifying the psychological contents specifically about how mothers experience relational selves among the relationships with their own family members.