ISSN : 1229-0718
The present study examined children's understanding about psychological, physical and biological phenomena. Children aged 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 11(16 at each age) participated. They were given s series of questions, which measured children's understanding of psychological knowledge(intension, belief, false-belief, trait), physical knoweldge(solidity, falling1(garvity), falling2(garvity+weight+air resistance buoyancy), and biological knowledge(energe exhaustion, growth, heredity, infection) and examined how they have changed with increasing age. The results showed that the psychological domain was indepentent from 3 year of age and childres's psychological knowledge existed as a form of naive theory in terms of their use as a causal devise in explaining the cause of psychological phenomena. However, in the physical domain, the knowledge system has changed after 9 years of age respectively and older children employed causal mechanism more frequently and relied less on the perceptual properties. In the biological domain, it changed dramatically from 3 to 5 years of age. In the energy exhaustion task, a few children used a psychological causal devise in explaining the cause of biological phenomena. The findings of the present study suggests that children's knowledge about psychological, psysocal and biological phenomena develop specifically each domain with increasing age.
The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the fundamental characteristical of moral emotion for the consideration of its positive implications. An open-ended questionnaire with three stories and parental control techniques was administered to 130 juvenile delinquents and 128 non-delinquents. The obtained data were analyzed through content analysis, and chi-squares were applied to examine the differences between the two groups. Results showed that significant differences between delinquent and non-delinquent juveniles were partly identified. Results also raised quesyions regarding the issues which power-assertive discipline and induction amog parental control techiniques would be associated with not only juvenile's internalizing moral emotion, values, but also with deliquency. It was confirmed that moral emotion would be an emotional paradigm with positive fundamental characteristic such as trust, respect and love. Implications and issue of further research were dicussed.
The present studies examined the effects of domain-specific knowledge about physical object, anomals and facial expressions on the appearance-reality distinction. Experiment 1 assessed the ability of 3-, 5-, 7-, 9-year olds to distinguish between the real and apparent identities of illusory stimuli. Three domains of stimuli were used: physical objects, animals and facial expressions. Three- and 5-year-olds could not distinguish the real and apparent identities of illusory stimuli. The distinctions of the real and apparent identities of the animals and facial expressions were more diffcult than those of the physical object; even 7-year-olds cuold not distinguish the real and apparent facial expression. In Experment 2, children were presented with stories about the transformations of apparences performed upon the physical objects, animals and facial epressions of emotional states, and then were asked to distinguish the real versus apparent identities of them. Three- and 5-year-olds did not understand that the transformations of appearance did not change the real identities of animals and emotional states, and thus could not distinguish the real and apparent identities. In contrast, 7- and 9-year-olds distinguished and identified the real and apparent identities of three domains of stimuli. The present results suggests that the development of the appearance-reality distinctions is a domain specific development, which occurs at different times for different domains.
The Representational Redescription model proposed by Karmiloff-Smith describes a process through which children elaborate their knowledge from unconscious and implicit levels to conscious explicit levels. The model also assumes that children in explicit levels are able to express their own representation of knowledge verbally. This study was to investigate how a verbalization training influences children's development of representational redescription. This study, 222 children aged from 5 to 7 years, who failed to explain their strategies of their solution in the balance task, were recruited. Children were divided into the experimental group and the control groups. A group of verbalization training was administered to a session using a 12 beam task. Compared to control groups, children in the training group showed more advanced levels of representation than their previous levels in a pretest. In particular, the effects of verbalization were salient in younger children. The results were interpreted as that verbalization is likely to facilitate children's reorganization of implicit knowledge, and eventually, to transfer the implicit knowledge toward explicit forms. Further research needs to pay more attention to the educational application of learning processes based on representational redescription.
The purpose of this study was to investigate how the essential behavioral characteristics differed among the attention-deficit/hyperactivity (ADHD) subtypes. Children (aged 7-12) diagnosed as ADHD at a local hospital were initially recruited, whose parents or teachers were asked to rate them using the DSM-IV criteria for ADHD and using the Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT). Forty-one children who met the criteria for ADHD-Inattention type (ADHD/I), and 44 who met the criteria for ADHD-Combined type were eventually selected to participate in this study. Forty-four children from a local elementary school who did not meet any of the criteria for ADHD were also included in this study as the control group. In this study, to test the differences in the essential characteristics and the attention problem between the two ADHD subtypes, the groups were compared on the ADHD score and on the SCT score. The most interesting result in this study was that DSM-IV attention items were divided into sustained attention and hypoactive attention. Sustained attention referred to the four inattention items from DSM-IV that correlated with the hyperactivity factor, and hypoactive attention referred to the five inattention items that correlated with the SCT factor. ADHD/I group exhibited significantly more SCT symptoms than the ADHD/C group and the control group, but ADHD/I group and ADHD/C group were not significantly different on the hypoactive attention score. ADHD/C group exhibited significantly higher hyperactivity/ impulsivity score and sustained attention score than did ADHD/I group and the control group. Such results suggest that ADHD/C is characterized by hyperactivity/impulsivity and sustained attention deficit, whereas the behaviors of the ADHD/I are characterized by SCT consisting of behaviors such as drowsiness, hypoactivity, and psychomotor retardation.
The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the development screen of the children who were from 18 months to 36 months. This development screen scale provides the frame of integrative understanding of their status how healthy toddlers are in mental area before developmental diagnosis. In addition, this scale can be used to evaluate whether toddlers should be intervened or not, and to make intervention plan if necessary. In developing the scale at this study, reviews of numbers of existing literatures, analysis of existing scales on the toddler's behavior, emotion, and development, validity check processes by field experts, and preliminary research were conducted. The subjects for this study were 368 toddlers from 18 months to 36 months who were screened for normal and risk group based on Denver II scale which was already standardized in Korea. The question items were selected based on component analysis, discriminated based on standards, and validated concurrently based on CBCL (1.5-5 ages). In addition, the cross validity was conducted to check that the developed scale at this study was still effective even if the size of sample group varied.
This study was conducted to iexplore mplicit representations of 'Close relationship' and 'Instrumental relationship' in College Students. Participants(220 male and female college students) were asked to complete an explicit questionnaire, RISC(Relational Interdependent Self-Construal) and SOC(Spheres of Control), and to respond 2 sorts of IAT(Implicit Assocation Test). The results were summed up as follows: Implicit representation of 'close relationship' is associated with 'comfort' and 'authentic' dimensions, whearas 'instrumental relationship' is associated with 'discomfort' and 'false' dimensions. IAT results were not correlated with explicit measures and did not show any significant difference between RISC high and low groups and between SOC high and low groups. The results were discussed in terms of development of relationship of college students and usefulness of IAT.