ISSN : 1229-0718
The current study examined early adolescents’ behavioral characteristics, social interplay, and the social influence of bullies and victims among fifth and sixth graders in elementary schools. Participants (N=736, 52% girls at wave 1, N=677, 52% girls at wave 2) completed friend nominations and peer nominations for bullies, victims, and academic-social behaviors. The results indicated that early adolescents’ physical aggression, relational aggression, and problem behavior at the start of the semester positively predicted their bullying behavior at the end of the semester. Moreover, early adolescents’ anxious behavior and uncooperative behavior at the start of the semester positively predicted their victimization at the end of the semester. Furthermore, results of the longitudinal social network analyses indicated that bullies received many friend nominations from peers and tended to be more influenced by friends who highly bullied others. In addition, highly victimized youth tended to form friendships with highly victimized peers, and youth whose friends are highly victimized became highly victimized themselves over time. The current study underscores the importance of early adolescents’ social interactions with friends, and highlight that early adolescents’ friend selection and social influence play a crucial role in explaining the development of their bullying and victimization.
This study examines the relationships among sibling bullying victimization (SBV), characterological self-blame (CSB), coping self-efficacy (CSE) and peer bullying victimization (PBV) in middle-school students to address how SBV develops into PBV. Self-reported data from 559 Korean middle school students aged 14 to 16 years were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that PBV directly predicted SBV, and the mediation effects of CSB and CSE were also significant. In other words, victimized experience with siblings increased the level of CSB, which in turn lowered CSE. Consequently, this raised the possibility of being victimized within peer groups. This study is noteworthy in that it is the first attempt to examine a concrete mechanism between PBV and SBV in Korea. Based on the findings, intervention strategies for PBV are discussed.
The current study examined the mediated roles of separation from parents and perceived mattering to parents in the effect of behavioral control parenting on adolescents’ self-esteem. A total of 131 middle school students (aged 13) and 137 university students (aged 23) participated in the study. First, fathers’ higher knowledge of their children’s activities and behaviors a predicted heightened perceived mattering to fathers, which in turn, predicted better self-esteem in adolescents. Second, for university students, the curvilinear effect of functional independence from their mothers on adolescents’ self-esteem was found. Adolescents who were in the middle level of functional independence from mothers showed lower self-esteem than adolescents who were in the higher and lower levels of functional independence from their mothers. The current study revealed the significant role of fathers and the possible different mechanisms regarding the effect of separation from mothers on adolescents’ self-esteem depending on their age.
The current study examined whether 12- to 17-month-olds are sensitive to the positivity of helping behaviors in their social evaluations. In a violation-of-expectation (VOE) task, they were first familiarized with helping and neutral events. In the helping event, an agent helped a circle, whereas the circle had no interaction with another agent in the neutral event. The test phase consisted of four trials in which the circle approached either the helper or the neutral agent. In a choice task, the infants were asked to choose either the helper or the neutral agent. In the VOE task, the infants looked reliably longer at the neutral agent-approach than at the helper-approach event in the second pair of test trials, suggesting that they expected the circle to approach the helper. However, such a difference in looking times in the two test events was not observed in the first pair of test trials. In the choice task, they preferred the helper over the neutral agent. The current findings demonstrate that 12- to 17-month-olds distinguish helpers from neutral agents when they infer others’ preferences as well as when they generate their own preferences.
The purpose of this study is to identify the mechanisms that link parent attachment and life satisfaction among university students. Building upon previous research, parent attachment can develop passion and grit in that it provides secure bases for exploration and self-determination. Two research models that include harmonious and obsessive passion were verified based on the dualistic model of passion. Acceptable model fit indices were achieved for both models. Significant mediating effects of passion and grit were found for the relationship between parent attachment and life satisfaction. Additionally, the serial multiple mediation of harmonious passion and grit was also shown. This study empirically confirmed the influence of parent attachment as an ecological factor for the growth of passion and grit. Results of the study were further discussed in light of structural relations among family, motivational, and personality factors to enhance life satisfaction.
This study aimed to classify life goals among South Korean 12th graders. Moreover, the roles of gender and developmental factors (parent-child relationships, a sense of community, and learning goal orientation) that contribute to life goal profiles were studied. Finally, adjustment at university according to life goal profiles was investigated. The Korean Educational Longitudinal Study data was analyzed, using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA). There were 2,828 participants (males: 1,275) who completed the second, third, sixth, and seventh surveys. The results indicated that the life goals of the 12th graders were classified into three types: pursuing life goals, intermediate, and low development. In addition, when students reported a high level of respect for parents, responsibility to participate in society, cooperative learning, the mastery approach, and performance avoidance, they were more likely to fall into the intermediate life goals profiles than the low development profiles. Moreover, a high level of achievement pressure, respect for parents, and concern for others contributed to increasing possibilities that students belong to the pursuing life goals profiles. In addition, compared to boys, girls tended to be more likely to be affiliated with pursuing life goals profiles than intermediate life goals profiles. Finally, pursuing a high level of diverse life goals in the 12th grade increased adjustment success at university. Theoretical and practical implications and limitations of the study are also discussed.
The purpose of this study was to identify cluster types based on maternal child-rearing stress and individual characteristics, all of which are known to have important associations with young children behavioral problems. To this end, 455 mothers of children aged three to six were recruited for self-reported questionnaires. To analyze the data, cluster analysis and multivariate analysis of variance were conducted. Three potential groups emerged: (1) low regulation weak type (high child-rearing stress, high emotional dysregulation, low cognitive self-regulation, and low mindfulness), (2) general average type (an average level of child-rearing stress, emotional dysregulation, cognitive self-regulation, and mindfulness), and (3) high regulation moderate type (low child-rearing stress, low emotional dysregulation, high cognitive self-regulation, and high mindfulness). The high regulation moderate type scored significantly lower than the other two in children behavioral problems. However, the low regulation weak type and the general average type did not differ in children internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems. The results imply that early integrative intervention that helps alleviate maternal child-rearing stress and promotes mothers regulatory resources should be instated to mitigate young children behavioral problems.
The present study examined the development of executive function in early childhood and investigated its relation to self-regulation. For these ends, a total 120 participants were given a Flanker task and a Delay of Gratification task(DG). Our results show age-related changes in the Flanker task and DG. In addition, there were significant correlations between ages, inhibition, shifting skills in the Flanker task, and attention deployment and waiting time in DG. Furthermore, after controlling for the age effect, the success group in DG showed higher levels of inhibition and a shifting ability in executive function compared with the failure group in DG. These findings support the hypothesis that the development of Executive Function is one of the underlying factors of self-regulation in early childhood.
Youth become increasingly concerned with their social status during early adolescence, and their social status is predictive of their academic and social functioning. The current study examined the longitudinal associations between two forms of social status(perceived popularity and social preference) and academic-social behavioral profiles, and the role of academic norms in behavioral development among early adolescents. Participants(N=736, 52% girls at W1, N=677, 52% girls at W2) evaluated the academic norms of their peers, and nominated peers for various academic and social behaviors as well as social status. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the two-factor structure of the behavioral profile: aggressive-disruptive and prosocial-engaged. Controlling for behavioral stability from W1 to W2, structural equation modeling indicated that the aggressive-disruptive behavioral profile at W1 positively predicted perceived popularity at W2. In addition, perceived popularity at W2 was positively associated with both aggressive-disruptive and prosocial-engaged behavioral profiles at W2, whereas social preference was negatively associated with the aggressive-disruptive behavioral profile but positively associated with the prosocial-engaged behavioral profile. Furthermore, youths’ academic norms at W2 were associated with an increased prosocial-engaged behavioral profile at W2. The current study underscores the importance of social status and peer norms in explaining adolescents’ behavioral development.
Language development has largely been considered a domain in which inborn capacities play fundamental roles because its development proceeds rapidly and automatically to a large extent. However, in recent years, the various roles that environmental input plays in the development of language have received much interest not only in vocabulary development, but also in speech perception and grammar acquisition. In this paper, we reviewed recent literature demonstrating the various roles of environmental input in the development of language. This review revealed that the more diverse and detailed aspects of environmental input have been considered, including fine-grained acoustic properties of input provided by caregivers, the quantity and quality of the verbal and nonverbal aspects of input, and differences in social interactions and social cues. These diverse aspects of input also play a variety of roles across multiple language development areas, such as the development of speech perception abilities, vocabulary growth, and the ability to produce more complex and sophisticated utterances.
Children use syntax to guide their verb learning—this is syntactic bootstrapping. The structure-mapping account proposes that syntactic bootstrapping begins with an innate bias to map nouns in a sentence onto participant roles in an event representation. Armed with this bias, infants interpret the number of nouns accompanying a new verb as evidence about the semantic structure of the sentence, and therefore, about the meaning of the verb. In this paper, I first review some of the evidence for the structure-mapping account, then discuss challenges to the account arising from the existence of languages that allow verbs’ arguments to be omitted, such as Korean. These challenges lead investigators to propose that an expectation of discourse continuity allows children to gather linguistic evidence for each verb’s arguments across sentences in a coherent discourse. Together, the proposed learning mechanisms and biases sketch a route whereby simple aspects of sentence structure guide verb learning from the start of multi-word sentence comprehension, and do so even if some of the new verb’s arguments are omitted due to discourse redundancy.