ISSN : 1229-0718
The current study examined the development of prosocial and aggressive behaviors in youth as related to the selection and influence of friends, and the potential moderating role of gender and relationship with their teacher in these processes. Participants were fifth and sixth graders from 48 classrooms and were followed from the start to the end of the semester in the Mid-West of the U.S. Across the school year, there was a tendency for youth to select peers who were similar to themselves as friends and to be influenced by their friends in regard to both aggressive and prosocial behaviors. However, friend selection and influence processes were moderated by youth’s gender and relationship with their teacher. Boys were more attracted to aggressive peers and less attracted to prosocial peers as friends, and were more influenced than girls by their friends' aggressive behavior over time. Further, when youth had a more positive relationship with their teacher, they were more likely to select peers who were highly prosocial and less aggressive as friends. Overall, results indicate that youth’s gender and relationship with their teacher play an important role in friendship dynamics and social behavior development.
The current study examined the development of prosocial and aggressive behaviors in youth as related to the selection and influence of friends, and the potential moderating role of gender and relationship with their teacher in these processes. Participants were fifth and sixth graders from 48 classrooms and were followed from the start to the end of the semester in the Mid-West of the U.S. Across the school year, there was a tendency for youth to select peers who were similar to themselves as friends and to be influenced by their friends in regard to both aggressive and prosocial behaviors. However, friend selection and influence processes were moderated by youth's gender and relationship with their teacher. Boys were more attracted to aggressive peers and less attracted to prosocial peers as friends, and were more influenced than girls by their friends' aggressive behavior over time. Further, when youth had a more positive relationship with their teacher, they were more likely to select peers who were highly prosocial and less aggressive as friends. Overall, results indicate that youth's gender and relationship with their teacher play an important role in friendship dynamics and social behavior development.
This study aimed to predict students’ learning amotivation with the following predictors: parental attitudes, teachers’ attitudes, and previous academic achievement. Learning amotivation had four dimensions: task characteristics, lack of task value, absence of belief in personal abilities, and absence of belief in personal effort. The data analysis incorporated the students’ perceived competence and perceived autonomy as mediating variables. To ascertain the associations within and between the variables, path analysis was applied to questionnaire data on 331 middle school students. The results found complex interrelationships: Previous academic achievement, perceived competence, and parental neglect predicted absence of belief in personal abilities; teachers’ attitudes, parental neglect, and perceived competence predicted lack of task value. Teachers’ attitudes, parental over-control, and perceived competence significantly influenced task characteristics. Previous academic achievement, parental neglect, perceived competence, perceived autonomy, and teachers’ attitudes predicted absence of belief in personal effort. Perceived competence and perceived autonomy differently mediated the effects of parental neglect and previous academic achievement on learning amotivation depending on its dimensions. In sum, the results confirmed that learning amotivation is a multidimensional construct.
This study investigated maternal warmth and controlling behavior as mediators of the relationship of chronic maternal depression to child behavioral problems. The model included a measure of child negative emotionality to control for its effects on child adjustment and maternal factors. Using data from the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education(KICCE) Panel Study on Korean Children(PSKC), 2,150 mothers and their children(50% female) were analyzed. Mothers self-rated their extents of depression (child age zero to five years), positive parenting (age six years), and child externalizing and internalizing problems (age seven years). The results found that mother’s chronic depression predicted their children’s externalizing and internalizing behaviroal problems, which was mediated by maternal warmth, but not by controlling behavior. That is, longer-lasting depressive symptoms predicted child’s behavior in the transition to school age through less warm parenting. The findings elucidated a developmental pathway to child maladaptation during the early school ages which suggests a promising target for early prevention.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of security priming and fear of negative evaluation on the process of social rejection leading to the desire to reconnect. A sample of 90 female university students aged 18 to 25 years participated in the experiment. The analysis used a 2 (security priming writing/control) × 2 (fear of negative evaluation: high/low) ANOVA test. Before the experiment, the subjects were tested by an online survey that categorized them as the low or high fear of negative evaluation. The social rejection procedure and security priming writing task were used to manipulate social rejection and felt-security, respectively. The desire to reconnect was measured by a scored task in which the subjects selected their extents of preference for future collaborative tasks. The results found a significant main effect of security priming writing and a significant interaction effect between security priming and the extent of fear of negative evaluation on the desire to reconnect. Based on these results, the paper discusses the effectiveness of security priming for establishing new social ties after social rejection.
Time and space are intimately related in real life, as can be seen from the nearly universal use of spatial concepts in time words across cultures. However, whether the form of spatiotemporal representations relies on the linear or on the logarithmic scale is still under debate. In addition, there is a lack of research investigating the development of spatiotemporal representations. Here, we examined the form of spatiotemporal representations across 6-8-year-olds, 9-11-year-olds, and adults using a novel timeline estimation paradigm. We asked participants to view a three-minute-long video clip and mark the temporal distance of a specific scene of the video on a horizontal timeline. We found non-linearity between their estimates and stimulus temporal distances, which decreased as the participants’ ages increased. Six-to-eight-year-old children showed the greatest non-linearity compared to other age groups, and there was no significant difference in the magnitude of non-linearity in estimation between 9-11-year-olds and adults. These results imply that humans might have a logarithmically compressed spatial representation of time across age groups.
The purpose of this study was to investigate children’s moral judgments and justifications about peer exclusion in gender-typed play, and to examine whether they differed by gender, Theory of Mind (ToM), and with respect to context and types of play. A sample of 106 children (five to six years old) participated in the study. The results found that children assessed peer exclusion more negatively in baseline context than in multifaceted context, and boys were more likely than girls to choose playmates that fit gender stereotypes. Analyses of justifications found that girls and children with high ToM used moral justifications more often than their counterparts. Moral justifications were more often used in baseline context. This study contributes to the field of moral development in that children as young as five to six years old considered situational factors to make moral judgments. Furthermore, children's gender and ToM influenced their moral judgments and justifications.
The purpose of this study was to test the dual mediating effects of dysfunctional beliefs and anxiety control on the relationship of maternal overprotection to social anxiety. The data comprised survey results on 456 undergraduate students aged 18 to 25 years old. The results of the Structural Equation Model(SEM) analysis indicated that only dysfunctional beliefs mediated the relationship of maternal overprotection to social anxiety. The dual mediating effects of dysfunctional beliefs and anxiety control were statistically significant for the relationship of maternal overprotection to social anxiety. Based on this finding, the paper discusses factors asscoiated with worsening social anxiety and effective intervention strategies for undergraduate students.
In the current study, we examined early adolescents’ friendship selection and social influence with regard to peer rejection and the role of teacher-student relationship among fifth and sixth graders. Participants (N=1131, 48% girls at wave 1 and 2) were followed from spring to fall within one academic year. With longitudinal social network analysis (RSiena), we found that early adolescents tended to select friends with similar levels of peer rejection in the classroom, and their friends influenced one another in their own peer rejection over time. Further, relationship with the teacher had a significant effect on youth’s own level of peer rejection. When youth had a supportive relationship with the teacher, they were less likely to be rejected by their peers. When youth had conflicts with the teacher, they were more likely to be rejected by their peers. The results suggest that peer processes of selection and influence play a role in the development of early adolescents’ peer rejection, and underscore the importance of the teacher-student relationship in youth’s peer dynamics of rejection.
One pervasive facet of human interactions is the tendency to favor ingroups over outgroups. What are the developmental origins of ingroup favoritism? Among several accounts proposed to answer this question, an evolutionary perspective holds that ingroup favoritism reflects in part an abstract and early-emerging sociomoral expectation of ingroup support. This paper reviews the key findings supporting this view and suggests future directions.