ISSN : 1229-0718
The current study examined the relationships between indicators of the prenatal environment (e.g., brith weight, 2D:4D, FA) and adult behavior (e.g., depression, emotionality, and schozotypal tendency). The results revealed that lower birth weight was associated with higher scores of schizotypal personality traits after controlling for confounding variables (age, income, handedness, and BMI). Lower 2D:4D predicted higher emotionality. Moreover, individuals with higher or lower 2D:4D had higher depression scores than those with average 2D:4D. FA had negative associations with men's emotionality and Idea of reference and women's No close friends. These findings add additional evidence for the effect of fetal programming on adult behavior. In addition, the fact that behavioral effects are observed in individuals with developmental indicators that fall within normal range suggests that long-term effects of prenatal environment can occur without extreme developmental deficits.
The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness and construct validity of the standardized Korean version of the social-emotional scale from the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-Third Edition (K-Bayley-III) as a screening tool for autism spectrum disorder. Participants were 248 typically developing infants and toddlers and 44 infants and toddlers with autism who ranged in age from 16 days to 42 months and 15 days. We used receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis to identify the scale’s discriminant power and a cut-off point, and nomological network analysis to verify the construct validity. The results were as follows: first, ROC analysis showed that the social-emotional scale was useful as a screening instrument for autism spectrum disorder. Further, 7 points was found to be suitable as the cut-off point for discriminating children with autism from children with typical development. Second, in the nomological network analysis, the postulated model based on Greenspan’s functional-emotional theory provided a reasonably good fit to the date, so the construct validity was ascertained. Practical applications and suggestions for future research were discussed.
The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness and construct validity of the standardized Korean version of the social-emotional scale from the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-Third Edition (K-Bayley-III) as a screening tool for autism spectrum disorder. Participants were 248 typically developing infants and toddlers and 44 infants and toddlers with autism who ranged in age from 16 days to 42 months and 15 days. We used receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis to identify the scale's discriminant power and a cut-off point, and nomological network analysis to verify the construct validity. The results were as follows: first, ROC analysis showed that the social-emotional scale was useful as a screening instrument for autism spectrum disorder. Further, 7 points was found to be suitable as the cut-off point for discriminating children with autism from children with typical development. Second, in the nomological network analysis, the postulated model based on Greenspan's functional-emotional theory provided a reasonably good fit to the date, so the construct validity was ascertained. Practical applications and suggestions for future research were discussed.
This study examined how anxious rejection sensitivity and need to belong mediate the relationship between parent-child conflicts and conformative behaviors in bullying situations. For this research, we collected the self-report data of 335 elementary school students (boys: 177, girls: 158) in Seoul and Gimpo. Data were analyzed by gender, using structural equation modeling. The results indicated that parent-child conflicts influenced anxious rejection sensitivity and need to belong, which consequently contributed to conformative behaviors only among girls. The mediating effect of need to belong was non-significant regardless of gender. This study suggests the importance of gender-specific approaches to reduce conformative behaviors in bullying situations. Based on these findings, effective prevention/intervention strategies were discussed.
We examined whether Korean 2- and 3-year-old children can use case markers to understand the meaning of Korean canonical (subject–object–verb; SOV) and noncanonical (object–subject–verb; OSV) word order in a transitive sentence. Side-by-side videos depicted the same caused motion events, both of which involved the same two characters but with the agent versus patient roles reversed. Along with the videos, children heard SOV sentences (e.g., Bear-nominative Rabbit-accusative is pushing.) or OSV sentences (e.g., Rabbit-accusative Bear-nominative is pushing.), both of which were marked with nominative and accusative case markers. Two-year-olds correctly understood only the canonical sentences (Experiment 1). In contrast, 3-year-olds understood both canonical and noncanonical sentences more accurately than predicted by chance (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that by the age of 3, Korean preschoolers can rely on case markers to understand sentence meaning.
Cognitive theories of anxiety disorders have proposed that biased selective processing of threatening information is a prominent cognitive factor in the causation and maintenance of anxiety. The major goals of this study were to determine the relationship between recognition of emotional facial expressions and level of geriatric anxiety, and to understand whether bias in emotional information recognition is related to attentional bias. In Study 1, 50 morphed facial expressions conveying happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and neutral emotions were created from neutral to fully emotive expression at 2% intervals. The subjects were asked to indicate which frame in the sequence of pictures showed the particular emotion, as well as to identify the illustrated emotion. The results demonstrated that the threshold for the correct identification of an angry facial expression was significantly lower for the group with a geriatric anxiety tendency as compared to the normal group, but that the threshold for the correct identification of a fear facial expression was not quite different between the two groups. In Study 2, a modified version of the probe detection task was used to investigate the time course of attentional bias for facial emotion. Facial pairs were presented across two exposure durations of 50 ms and 1,500 ms. The results showed that the geriatric anxiety tendency group was more vigilant for angry facial expression in the brief exposure duration (50 ms) condition. However, the same group showed a very reliable tendency to avoid the angry faces. The limitations of the present study and directions for future research were discussed.
The objective of this study was to understand the context of the school violence experience from the perspective of school violence perpetrators. In order to achieve this aim, this study used a qualitative research method and examined cases of school violence as experienced by school violence perpetrators. Under the assumption that school violence perpetrators and relevant factors are intimately related and influence each other, this study employed a contextual construct analysis method to develop contextual structures that integrated all cases. The results of our analysis showed that first, school violence context was a function of not only the school violence perpetrator himself/herself, but also family, peer group, school, and local community as a whole. Second, among various phenomena and experiences that occurred prior to incidents of school violence, permissive attitude toward violence, exposure to violence within family, emotional distance, study and rewards for violence all had a negative impact, whereas experiences of emotional intimacy within the family, care and affection, and trust all acted as positive factors that helped to stop violence perpetration and prevent re-occurrence of violence. Third, in terms of trigger factors for those incidents, personality traits, such as impulsiveness, aggression, and—when emotionally unstable—stress, were the main causes. When they were psychologically dependent on peer groups, some people joined the perpetrator group because they strongly identified with the peers and were unable to actively express their opinions. Fourth, while perpetrators sometimes felt frustration about punishment during the process of handling cases, they were positively impacted by care and affection received from the police, parents, and teachers. Finally, when we categorized cases by similar types according to both personality characteristics and contextual characteristics, the following subtypes were found: “socially conditional follower,” “emotionally vulnerable,” and “antisocial personality.” Based on these results, this study suggested effective and systematic counseling intervention methods according to each subtype, in order to prevent reoccurrence of school violence.
This study investigated the influence of children's effortful control and maternal emotion-related parenting behavior on emotion regulation of children. The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES), in which mothers provide self-reports of their emotion-related child-rearing attitude, was translated into a brief Korean version that was composed of 28 items. Further, children’s effortful control, maternal emotion- related parenting behavior, and emotion regulation of children were measured by mothers’ self-reports, a behavior experiment, and behavior observation of 68 pairs of 3–5-year-old children and their mothers. The main results were as follows: first, attention focusing, inhibitory control and attention shift of children's effortful control were positively correlated with emotion regulation(ERC). Inhibitory control of children's effortful control was negatively correlated with down-regulation of emotion regulation(MSSB) and attention shift of children's effortful control positively correlated with failure of MSSB. The emotion-focused reaction and expressive encouragement dimensions of the CCNES were positively correlated with ERC, and the distress dimension of CCNES was negatively with ERC. Second, attention shift and inhibitory control of effortful control and the problem‧emotion-focused reactions dimension of the CCNES positively predicted ERC. Inhibitory control of effortful control negatively predicted down-regulation of MSSB, and attention shift of effortful control negatively did exaggeration of MSSB. Further, inhibitory control of effortful control (“Simon Says” task) negatively predicted exaggeration of MSSB, and inhibitory control of effortful control (delay of gratification task) positively predicted performance of Disappointing Present. Study limitations and future research directions were discussed.
This study aimed to investigate age differences in cognitive control. Participants were 49 7- to 12-year-old children and 37 adults, who performed a computerized Stroop task. Stroop effects and conflict adaptation effects were calculated. First, children showed larger Stroop effects than did adults for error rates and reaction times, whereas the two groups showed similar levels of Stroop effects for the percentage of reaction times. Second, children didn't show conflict adaptation effects for errors, reaction times and the percentage of reaction times, whereas adults showed conflict adaptation effects for reaction times and the percentage of reaction times. Third, two types of conflict adaptation effects were analyzed separately. Children and adults displayed a similar level of congruent adaptation effect, whereas only adults showed an incongruent adaptation effect. Even in children, cognitive control, which facilitates a goal-relevant response for better performance, reached adult levels, but the cognitive control that inhibits goal-irrelevant response was present only in adults.
This study aimed at examining developmental changes in ambivalence over emotional expression (AE) and the relationships among AE, emotional expressiveness (EE), and behavior problems (BP) by age group. Groups of children, adolescents, and adults participated in this study. They completed questionnaires assessing AE, EE, BP, and psychological well-being. The results were as follows: first, AE and EE improve with age. Second, AE was significantly and positively correlated with EE in the children group but negatively correlated with EE in the adult group. Third, AE was significantly and positively correlated with BP in every group. An interesting finding was that AE was correlated with both internalizing and externalizing BP in the adolescent group, but only with internalizing BP in the adult group. Finally, a negative correlation was found between AE and psychological well-being in the adolescent and adult groups, but not in the children group.
This study examined the effects of physical exercise on children’s executive functions. Fifty one 3-year- old, 53 4-year-old, and 53 5-year-old children participated in the study. The children in each age group were divided into two groups, i.e., a physical exercise group and a non-physical exercise group. Children in the physical exercise group participated in the football game or Taekwondo after school and children in the non-physical exercise group participated in a violin lesson or an English lesson after school. Three components of executive functions were measured by 6 tasks. Inhibitory control was measured by a flag task and 3 types of flanker tasks. Switching was measured by a card-sorting task and children’s color trail task. Working memory was measured by a backward-word task and a backward-number task. The executive functions were measured before these lessons began, and again after the lessons ended. The results indicated that the overall performance on executive functions improved much higher in the physical exercise group than in the non-physical exercise group. It means that physical exercise plays an important role in executive functions. There was also a significant age effect, showing a big difference between 3- and 4-year-olds. It implies that the physical exercise effect might vary depending on the age level.
This study reviewed 74 suicide-relevant articles published by the Korean Psychological Association Divisions since 1990, including several formal data and meta-analysis data studies on suicide prevention, using a vulnerability stress model. Through the review, we found some differences in suicide risk factors between the Korean youth and elderly groups. Family violence in childhood, academic problems, and bullying at school were factors that increased vulnerability among Korean adolescents, while poverty or economic crisis and deterioration in health or negative self-perceived health increased vulnerability among Korean elders. The elders tended to make a decision to commit suicide after deep reflection and were mainly affected by hopeless, while, in contrast, the youth group members attempted suicide as an immediate response. The previous reviewed studies showed the importance of social support as a psychological buffer against suicide in both groups. There were some limitations, in that many suicide prevention programs were focused on adolescents and college students but very little research has been conducted in the context of the elderly. We need more prevention programs for Korean elders, which take into consideration developmental tasks.