An Attributional Intervention to Reduce Peer-directed Aggression among African-American Boys

An attributional intervention was designed to reduce aggressive males' tendency to attribute hostile intentions to peers following ambiguously caused peer provocations. African-American elementary school boys ( N = 101), aggressive and nonaggressive, were randomly assigned to the attributional intervention, an attention training program, or a no-treatment control group. Data were collected on subjects' attributions about hypothetical and laboratory simulations of peer provocation, disciplinary referrals to the school office, and teacher ratings of aggressive behavior. Aggressive subjects in the attributional intervention were less likely to presume hostile intent by peers in hypothetical and laboratory simulations of ambiguous provocation. They were also less likely to endorse hostile retaliation on judgment measures and to engage in verbally hostile behaviors in the laboratory task. Further, intervention subjects were rated as less aggressive by their teachers following the treatment. Both the benefits of attributional change and its limitations in the African-American population are discussed.     

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.     

儿童关系攻击行为研究综述

关系攻击是指故意操纵或破坏他人同伴关系的一种伤害性行为,它比身体攻击和言语攻击更加间接和隐蔽,不容易被教师和家长发现,但对儿童的心理-社会适应有长期的负面影响.然而,有关学前儿童关系攻击行为发生原因、发展过程、影响因素的研究却刚刚起步.本文对相关研究的结果进行了梳理,探讨当前对儿童关系攻击行为的研究方法及研究的未来发展方向.     

Developing Children's Understanding of Fractions: An Intervention Study

Fractions constitute a stumbling block in mathematics education. To improve children's understanding of fractions, we designed an intervention based on learning‐by‐doing activities, which focused on the representation of the magnitude of fractions. Participants were 292 Grade 4 and 5 children. Half of the classes received experimental instruction, while the other half pursued their usual lessons. For 10 weeks, they played five different games using cards representing fractions (e.g., Memory and Blackjack). Wooden disks helped them represent and manipulate fractions while playing games. Our results showed an improvement in the conceptual understanding of fractions. The findings confirmed that the usual practice in teaching fractions is largely based on procedural knowledge and provides only minimal opportunities for children to conceptualize the meaning and magnitude of fractional notations. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that a short intervention inducing children to manipulate, compare, and evaluate fractions improves their ability to associate fractional notations with numerical magnitude.     

The Role of Overt Aggression, Relational Aggression, and Prosocial Behavior in the Prediction of Children's Future Social Adjustment

2 limitations of past research on social adjustment were addressed: (1) the tendency to focus on forms of aggression that are typical of boys (e.g., overt aggression) and to neglect forms that are more typical of girls (e.g., relational aggression) and (2) the tendency to study negative behaviors (e.g., aggression), to the exclusion of positive behaviors (e.g., prosocial acts). Using a longitudinal design ( n = 245; third- through sixth-grade children, 9–12 years old), assessments of children's relational aggression, overt aggression, prosocial behavior, and social adjustment were obtained at 3 points during the academic year. Findings showed that, as has been demonstrated in past research for overt aggression, individual differences in relational aggression were relatively stable over time. Additionally, relational aggression contributed uniquely to the prediction of future social maladjustment, beyond that predicted by overt aggression. Finally, prosocial behavior contributed unique information (beyond that provided by overt and relational aggression) to the prediction of future social adjustment.     

幼儿社会退缩与好奇心的关系

本研究采用问卷调查法探讨了幼儿社会退缩与好奇心之间的关系,结果显示：社会退缩幼儿的好奇心明显偏低,并在好奇心总分及其各分量表上的得分与正常儿童相比,均存在显著性差异或极其显著性差异。只有“害羞沉默”与“观察”呈负相关但差异不明显。退缩幼儿因其好奇心偏低而可能存在令人堪忧的发展隐患,需要对他们进行及时的预防和干预。     

儿童成长问题的社会关注调查分析及教育对策

儿童成长问题备受社会关注。教师和家长较侧重于关注儿童学习方面的问题,对其个性培养也给予了高度关注,但忽视了幼儿的体育锻炼。转变教育观念,使儿童健康成长应是真正值得关注的问题。     

理解儿童的理解——从哲学解释学的角度分析

后现代哲学解释学认为理解是人存在的方式.人自从呱呱落"地"以后,就不断理解着世界,体现生命和生存的意义,那些看上去很"浅薄的"哲学和科学思想,以及"简单"的艺术手法,无不体现儿童对世界的理解.但在现实社会中,成人往往无法正确理解儿童,容易把成人的意识强加给儿童.我们要通过"澄明""阐亮"和"平等对话"来改变这种现状,还儿童一片新的世界.     

Children's Understanding of Guild and Shame

Children's conceptions of the self-conscious emotions guilt versus shame were investigated. In Study 1, 10–12-year-old children answered questions about scenarios that should elicit feelings of guilt and/or shame (moral transgressions and social blunders). In Study 2, 7–9- and 10–12-year-old children completed a sorting task to ascertain the features they associate with guilt and shame. Feelings of guilt were aroused by moral norm violations. Guilt feelings were also seen as involving an approach-avoidance conflict with respect to the victim, self-criticism, remorse, desire to make amends, and fear of punishment. Feelings of shame resulted from both moral transgressions and social blunders. Younger children associated shame with embarrassment, blushing, ridicule, and escape. Older children additionally characterized shame as feeling stupid, being incapable of doing things right, and not being able to look at others.     

对图书馆社会责任的理解与分析

分析了社会责任的内涵;明确了图书馆承担社会责任的必要性;梳理了国外企业与图书馆承担社会责任的历程,指出随着社会的发展,图书馆承担社会责任的外延在不断扩大;剖析了图书馆社会责任和母体社会的关系;阐明了图书馆社会责任的范围和作用是有限的。     

Children's Understanding of Agriculture as an economic activity: the role of figurative information

This paper presents the results of a curriculum of basic economic concepts given to 5 fourth-grade classes (Ss=95). The main topic of this curriculum was the production and distribution of agricultural produce, which had already proved to be difficult for the children. The proposed curriculum was largely inspired by the idea that familiarity with «social scenes» related to the economic process in question is necessary (although not sufficient) to allow children to understand such concepts. Children's level of understanding was tested before and after the curriculum by means of a semi-structured interview on 3 main topics: farmers' use of produce; farmers' use of earnings; produce distribution. Answers were scored according to their complexity and correctness; variance analyses performed on the scores showed significant improvements, as well as differences between classes. A qualitative analysis of children's answers was also performed, with the aim of interpreting the nature of change in each topic.     

Consequences of Retaliatory Aggression against Siblings and Peers: Urban Minority Children's Expectations

Expectations about the outcomes of retaliation against siblings were compared to those about peers in a group of 10–14-year-old, mostly African-American or Hispanic youth. Boys believed that parents would disapprove more of retaliation against siblings than friends, while girls believed parents would equally disapprove of retaliation against either target. Participants of both genders expected that retaliation would deter additional aggressive actions of friends more than of siblings. Participants expected younger siblings, especially brothers, to feel worse than older siblings following retaliation, and girls expected to feel worse retaliating against younger siblings. Siblings close in age expect fewer negative consequences of retaliation. Children's expectations seem to promote more aggression toward friends than siblings and to promote aggression toward siblings closer in age. No ethnic differences emerged in expectations about conflict. The findings are discussed in relation to research on expectations as a mediator of behavior.     

Preschool Children's Social Interactions Involving Moral and Prudential Transgressions: An Observational Study

Preschool children's social interactions with teachers and peers were observed in the context of moral and prudential events. Twenty groups of children were observed during free play for a total of 164 hours (8 hours per each group). Four types of moral transgressions were observed: physical harm, psychological harm, property loss, and property damage. The majority of the moral transgressions pertained to physical harm and property loss. There were equal frequencies of both moral and prudential physical harm acts; Moral physical harm acts resulted in actual harm; whereas, prudential acts were only potentially harmful. Teachers responded differently to moral and prudential rule violations. Gender differences were noted with regard to instigator, victim teachers' responses, and victims' responses.     

影响儿童道德情感的社会因素探析

学校教育是儿童道德情感发展的重要影响因素,而社会因素的影响亦不容忽视。笔者认为,社会文化是道德情感印入和陶冶的依据,社会属性对道德情感具有塑造作用,社会形象是形成道德认识和激发道德情感的基本诱因,社会突变可改变道德情感的稳定性和强度。     

Children's Understanding of Logical Inconsistency

Five experiments involving 245 participants examined children's understanding of logical consistency. For instance, a character said that a man was both tall and very short. Only by 6 years of age did children show any understanding of logical inconsistency. This occurred despite: (1) good memory for the characters' claims; (2) the use of three different question forms including whether a person had made sense, said something silly, or whether both things a person said could be right; (3) the ability to identify other types of statements (e.g., factual inconsistencies) as not making sense; (4) the ability to compare and contrast the characters' claims in other ways; and (5) attempts to deepen children's processing of the claims by asking them to draw what each character said. Similar to false belief understanding, there was a monotonic relation between the number of older siblings a child had and logical consistency understanding on one of the tasks. It is argued that children may fail the different consistency tasks because of both logical factors (e.g., insufficient insight into logical necessity) and nonlogical factors tied to their social knowledge or insight into representation.     

认识当前社会现象的两把钥匙--阶级分析法和阶层分析法

对社会现象分析有两种思路:阶级分析和阶层分析.这两种分析方法适用不同的社会现象.在当前,阶级分析法是观察社会主义与各种敌对势力斗争现象的一把钥匙,而阶层分析法则是认识当前社会结构的另一把钥匙.     

An Attributional Analysis of Maternal Beliefs about the Importance of Child-rearing Practices

2 principles from attribution theory, covariation and hedonic bias, were employed to examine mothers' attributions for their children's outcomes in the academic, social, and personality domains. Mother of 5–17-year-old gifted, regular, and special education children who were from only-child or multiple-child families made attributions for offspring outcomes to childrearing practices, genetics, and the environment. Based on the covariation principle, it was predicted that mothers of only children would attribute greater importance to child-rearing practices as causes of their children's outcomes than would mothers of multiple children. In addition, predictions based on the hedonic bias led us to hypothesize greater endorsement of child-rearing attributions for gifted (perceived high success) than special education (perceived low success) children. Both hypotheses were supported across all 3 domains. The dilemma of perceived parental responsibility and the usefulness of an attributional approach for understanding parents' causal beliefs are discussed.