Preschool Children's Judgments about Hypothetical and Actual Transgressions

Preschoolers' ( N = 112) judgments about hypothetical and actual moral and conventional transgressions were examined. Equal numbers of boys and girls at 2 ages (3 and 4 years old) either made judgments about 8 hypothetical moral and conventional transgressions or were interviewed on the same dimensions about 8 naturally occurring moral and conventional transgressions they witnessed in their preschools. Children judged both hypothetical and actual moral transgressions to be more serious, punishable, generalizably wrong, and independent of rules and authority than conventional transgressions. Regardless of domain, hypothetical transgressions were judged to be more wrong independent of rules than actual transgressions, and hypothetical (but not actual) moral transgressions were judged to be more independent of rules than conventional transgressions. 3-year-old girls judged the wrongness of actual moral transgressions to be more independent of authority than did 3-year-old boys. Similar findings were obtained when hypothetical and actual transgressions were matched, and domain differences were still obtained when individual items were examined. Findings are discussed in terms of previous research on preschoolers' conceptions of rules and transgressions.     

Group Social Context and Children's Aggressive Behavior

Very little is known about the influence of the social-psychological context on children's aggressive behavior. The purpose of this research was to examine the interrelations of group contextual factors and the occurrence of aggressive behavior in 22 experimental play groups of 7- and 9-year-old African-American boys. Group context was examined before, during, and after an aggressive act as well as during nonaggressive periods. The results showed that there are dimensions of group context (i.e., negative affect, high aversive behavior, high activity level, low group cohesion, competitiveness) that were related to the occurrence of aggressive behavior between 2 children in the group. Group context influenced how children reacted to aggression between its members (e.g., siding with the victim), which in turn influenced the quality of the postaggression group atmosphere. This study suggests that individual-within-context information be incorporated into theories of aggression among children.     

Children's Social Reasoning in Context: Reply to Gabennesch

Children's social reasoning is multifaceted. Moral judgments of justice, welfare, and rights are an important aspect of domains of social reasoning that are not merely the arbitrary and relative products of social formations. In defining all social formations as conventions that are either reified or accurately perceived as arbitrary and relative human inventions, Gabennesch relegates the moral concepts of many philosophers, moral leaders, and laypersons to ethnocentrism and reification. In the process, he fails to distinguish between metaethics relating to the source of knowledge and the form of knowledge. He also fails to account for distinctions between conventionality and moral concepts that do not constitute realism or reification. His review of the evidence of moral realism in children is selective in that isolated findings are taken out of the context of a particular study and of the entire body of evidence. Moreover, he has incorrectly interpreted many of the findings he cites in support of childhood realism. We present a summary of 48 studies demonstrating that children distinguish morality and convention. Gabennesch's perceptual metaphors hinge on an exaggerated role for conventionality in social formations at the expense of other complex social phenomena.     

社会建构论视野中的心理科学

社会建构论认为心理现象是社会建构的产物,没有本体论的基础。它主张知识是建构的,是处于特定文化历史中的人们互动和协商的结果。社会建构论关注了文化的作用,对于消除心理学中的个体主义倾向有积极的意义,从认识论上讲,社会建构论主张从对文化的意义和更为实用的角度认识理论观点的作用,对于建设一个应用倾向的心理学也具有积极的影响,但是社会建构论的相对主义和怀疑论的观点也受到严厉的批评。     

Swiss Children's Moral and Psychological Judgments About Inclusion and Exclusion of Children With Disabilities

Children's judgments about inclusion and exclusion of children with disabilities were investigated in a Swiss sample of 6‐, 9‐, and 12‐year‐old children from inclusive and noninclusive classrooms (N = 422). Overall, the majority of children judged it as morally wrong to exclude children with disabilities. Yet, participants were less likely to expect the inclusion of children with mental or physical disabilities in academic and athletic contexts compared to social contexts. Moreover, older children more consistently coordinated disability type with context of exclusion. There were also significant differences depending on the type of classroom. The findings extend existing research on exclusion by investigating exclusion based on disability across different age groups and educational settings.     

Children's Judgments of Flags and Flag-Burning

This study examined children's conceptions of flags as social conventions and understandings of the symbolic and psychological consequences associated with transgressions toward flags. Seventy-two children, at 6, 8, and 10 years, answered general questions about flags as social conventions and judged flag-burning scenarios in which intentions of agents and consequences for recipients were varied. Flag-burning acts were motivated by symbolic, accidental, or instrumental intentions and occurred in public or private. Children at all ages viewed flags as social conventions (i.e., alterable), and symbolic acts of flag-burning occurring in public locations were judged more negatively than private transgressions. Age differences were found in evaluations of instrumental violations and in justifications used to evaluate flag-burning incidents. Overall, findings suggest that despite age-related increases in understanding of flags as meaningful collective symbols, children at all ages considered transgressions to be important and to have moral consequences (i.e., psychological harm).     

论述幼儿心理发展中的敏感期

敏感期是儿童在发展过程中产生的一种独特的心理现象,是一种天生的美德和内驱力、是儿童最容易对特定刺激作出反应、并使自身能力得到最佳发展的关键时期。因此,研究这一心理现象,对开发儿童智力、帮助儿童养成良好的行为习惯以及塑造优秀品质等具有重要意义。     

汶川大地震后儿童心理干预要注意的几个问题

结合灾后儿童应激发展阶段特点和国内学者对唐山大地震孤儿心理健康的远期调查研究,提出汶川大地震后儿童心理干预要采取科学、及时、有效的策略,要注意对不同应激阶段儿童心理干预的策略不同、对不同类型儿童心理干预的侧重点不同、发挥儿童自身恢复力以避免“心理变异”的产生等三大问题,以尽快治愈儿童当前严重的心理创伤以及减少远期心理障碍后遗症。     

The Role of Agent and Social Context in Judgments of Freedom of Speech and Religion

This study examined children's, adolescents', and college students' judgments of the rights of child and adult agents to freedom of speech and religion in 3 social contexts: the general level of society, the school, and the family. Two hundred forty participants, evenly divided into 5 grade levels (mean ages 6,6, 8,5,10,6,12,4, and 22,7) made judgments of the legitimacy of authority prohibition, rule evaluation, generalizability, and rule violation for all freedom/social context/agent combinations. Concepts of freedom of speech and religion were found to emerge in the early elementary school years, and endorsements of freedoms were increasingly affected by social context and agent with age. College students were less likely than any other age group to affirm children's freedom of religion in the family context. Considerations of the mental competence and maturity of agents and the potential for harm to ensue from acting on freedoms played an important part in the decisions of older, but not younger, participants.     

父母心理控制与幼儿社会退缩的关系

本研究采用《父母心理控制水平调查问卷》和《幼儿社会行为教师问卷》对广州市210名幼儿进行调查,探讨幼儿社会退缩与父母心理控制水平的关系.结果表明父母的消极心理控制与幼儿社会退缩呈正相关,并能预测幼儿的社会退缩行为;父母的内疚感引导、焦虑感引导、监管,与幼儿的沉默害羞呈极其显著正相关,保护儿童与幼儿沉默害羞负相关;内疚感引导、权威控制、贬低儿童与儿童主动退缩呈正相关,情感表达与儿童主动退缩呈负相关;家长独立与儿童被动退缩呈正相关.父母应对幼儿社会行为进行正确引导并适度控制,同时应加强亲子沟通,努力建立良好的亲子关系,以减少幼儿社会退缩行为的发生,促进其社会性发展.     

Children's Developing Descriptions and Judgments of Pretending

Two studies investigated 4- to 7-year-olds’ knowledge about pretending. In Study 1, children (N = 66) defined pretending and described examples of own and others’ pretending. In Study 2, children (N = 52) defined pretending and then completed a battery of measures that examined their understanding that pretending involved mental states. In Study 1, older children articulated more defining features of pretending than younger children. When describing how they or others pretended, children focused on action or appearance, regardless of whether they had included more defining features in their definitions of pretending. In Study 2, the more defining features children articulated, the better their performance on the battery. We discuss the implications of these data for the role of pretending in children's developing theory of mind.     

Contributions of Children's Temperament to Teachers' Judgments of Social Competence From Kindergarten Through Second Grade

Research Findings: Children's social competence has been linked to successful transition to formal school. The purpose of this study was to examine the contributions of children's temperament to teachers' ratings of their social competence from kindergarten through 2nd grade. Children (N = 1,364) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network participated in this study. Mothers rated children's shyness, attentional focusing, and inhibitory control with the Children's Behavior Questionnaire at 4½ years, and teachers rated children's social competence with three subscales (cooperation, assertion, and self-control) of the Social Skills Rating System at kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade. Latent growth curve analysis indicated that both shyness and effortful control contributed to children's social competence. Bolder children were likely to have higher assertion ratings, and shyer children with greater attentional focusing were likely to have higher assertion ratings. Shyer children and children with greater inhibitory control and attentional focusing were likely to have higher teacher ratings of self-control and cooperation. Practice or Policy: Findings highlight the importance of considering child temperament characteristics when understanding children's social competence and successful adjustment to kindergarten. Information may help parents, preschool teachers, and early elementary teachers prepare children who may be at particular risk for lower social competence.     

Theory of Mind: Deaf and Hearing Children's Comprehension of Picture Stories and Judgments of Social Situations

We compared 20 prelingually profoundly deaf adolescents (age: 11-16 years) and 20 matched, hearing adolescents on a picture-sequencing task and on a social judgment test. In addition, we also tested 14 younger deaf children (age: 6-10 years) and compared their data with those from 20 hearing peers as well as those from the older deaf participants on the picture-sequencing task. The results from this study did not provide evidence for the hypothesis that deaf adolescents possess significantly poorer knowledge about social reasoning than age-matched hearing peers, but it did present further additional support for Peterson and Siegal's (1995) conversational hypothesis: a proposal that a deprivation in conversations about mental states leads to an impairment in the development of an awareness of mental states in the younger deaf children.     

Children's Naive Theories of Intelligence Influence Their Metacognitive Judgments

Recent studies have shown that the metacognitive judgments adults infer from their experiences of encoding effort vary in accordance with their naive theories of intelligence. To determine whether this finding extends to elementary schoolchildren, a study was conducted in which 27 third graders (M_age = 8.27) and 24 fifth graders (M_age = 10.39) read texts presented in easy‐ or difficult‐to‐encode fonts. The more children in both grades viewed intelligence as fixed, the less likely they were to interpret effortful or difficult encoding as a sign of increasing mastery and the more likely they were to report lower levels of comprehension as their perceived effort increased. This suggests that children may use naive theories of intelligence to make motivationally relevant inferences earlier than previously thought.     

Social Context Effects on Children's Performance of Number Conservation Tasks: plausibility and evidence

Abstract Recent controversy over Piagetian tasks concerns whether the experimenter's actions result in children misunderstanding the question. Evidence for this has been derived from differences in performance of conservation tasks according to whether the transformation is intentional or accidental. Studies reporting large differences according to transformation type are claimed to be flawed procedurally. Including a preliminary talk and restricting questions to one domain result in little or no transformation type effect. Whether children's correct judgments in accidental versions are reliable indications of their knowledge has also been disputed. They may reflect children's ignoring of the transformation or covert counting. Using an identity conservation pretest 192 Yemeni children were selected to be tested on number conservation tasks varying in transformation type, numerosity and equality. The results were analysed using a model‐fitting procedure. Identity nonconservers were affected by transformation type but not numerosity whereas identity conservers showed the opposite pattern. The identity nonconservers may simply have been so bemused by the adult experimenter introducing a soft toy in the accidental conditions that they guessed. For identity nonconservers guessing will result in greater success than reasoning.     

Classifying the Context Clues in Children's Text

This study aimed to determine which types of context clues exist in children's texts and whether it is possible for experts to identify reliably those clues. Three experienced coders used Ames’ clue set as a foundation for a system to classify context clues in children's text. Findings showed that the adjustments to Ames’ system resulted in 15 clues that can be used to capture the majority of clues found in children narrative and expository text. This study adds to the limited empirically validated systems available for classifying different context clues. A usable classification of context clues has application to reading research that considers or controls for text factors as well as teaching reading strategies in K–12 classrooms.     

Children's Proportional Judgments: The Importance of "Half"

3 experiments are reported, all of which show the crucial importance of the "half" boundary in children's proportional judgments. In the first experiment 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children had to judge which of 2 boxes of blue and white bricks was represented in a small picture. The proportion of blue to white bricks was different in the 2 boxes, and the question was whether the children could use these proportions to make their choices. The 6- and 7-year-old children solved the problem much more successfully when the proportions crossed the "half" boundary (e.g., 3/8 blue vs. 5/8 blue). The second experiment showed that discriminations involving half (e.g., 1/2 blue vs. 1/4 blue) are also easier than those that do not cross the "half" boundary for the 6- and 7-year-olds. The third experiment confirmed the results of the first 2 with pictures of different absolute sizes from each other. We conclude that "half" plays a crucial role in children's early proportional reasoning, and that the "half" boundary is to some extent similar to, though not as powerful as, the category boundaries discovered in speech perception.     

First Possession,History, and Young Children's Ownership Judgments

It is impossible to perceive who owns an object; this must be inferred. One way that children make such inferences is through a first possession bias—when two agents each use an object, children judge the object belongs to the one who used it first. Two experiments show that this bias does not result from children directly inferring ownership from first possession; the experiments instead support an alternative account according to which the first possession bias reflects children's historical reasoning. In Experiment 1, eighty‐five 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds only based inferences on first possession when it was informative about the past. In Experiment 2, thirty‐two 5‐year‐olds based ownership judgments on testimony about past contact, while disregarding testimony about future contact.     

中国文化情景中的专业社区工作

社区工作发展与社会文化的关系是中国社区工作者始终无法回避的问题。在中国的社会文化情景中开展社区工作实践需要处理好三个方面的问题：专业价值与地方文化之间的冲突,文化理解,以及发展适应本地的社区工作理论和技巧。内地社区工作在未来发展过程中需要处理好普遍性与独特性、专业使命与专业化、专业介入与居民参与、社区服务与社区组织、界限与整合等重要关系。