Social information processing and coping strategies of shy/withdrawn and aggressive children: does friendship matter?

The primary objectives of this investigation were to examine the attributions, emotional reactions, and coping strategies of shy/withdrawn and aggressive girls and boys and to examine whether such social cognitions differ within the relationship context of friendship. Drawn from a sample of fifth and sixth graders (M age = 10.79 years; SD = .77), 78 shy/withdrawn, 76 aggressive, and 85 control children were presented with hypothetical social situations that first involved unfamiliar peers, and then a mutual good friend. Results revealed group and gender differences and similarities, depending on the relationship context. From our findings emerges a central message: friends' involvement during interpersonal challenges or stressors mitigates children's attributions, emotions, and coping responses.     

Pathways From Childhood Sociomoral Sensitivity in Friendship,Insecurity, and Peer Rejection to Adult Friendship Quality

Across the life span, friendship is an important component of people’s support networks. This article explores the developmental roots of adult friendship intimacy and satisfaction, taking into consideration the early interplay between sociomoral sensitivity in friendship, insecurity in peer contexts, and peer rejection. Data (N = 176) came from the longitudinal study “Individual Development and Social Structure.” Respondents were surveyed repeatedly from age 7 to 37 years. Autoregressive cross-lagged panel models show that sociomoral sensitivity in friendship protects adolescents from peer rejection and is reciprocally associated with insecurity. Childhood and adolescent sociomoral sensitivity antecede early adult friendship intimacy, which, in turn, antecedes friendship satisfaction in mid-adulthood. The findings indicate a sequence of pathways from sociomoral sensitivity developed early in life to friendship quality in adulthood.     

Effects of motivational and volitional email messages (MVEM) with personal messages on undergraduate students' motivation, study habits and achievement

This study investigated what kind of supportive information can be effective in improving the situation where there were severe motivational challenges. Motivational and volitional email messages (MVEM) were constructed based on an integrated model of four theories and methods, which are Keller's ARCS model, Kuhl's action control theory, Gollwitzer's Rubicon model of motivation and volition, and Visser & Keller's strategy of motivational messages, and distributed with personal messages created based on audience analysis to a large undergraduate class. In order to examine the effects of the messages on motivation for the course, study habits (study time), and achievement (test grade), MVEM were sent to 30 students (Personal Message Group: PMG) with personal messages and to 71 students (Non‐Personal Message Group: NonPMG) without personal messages. Results indicated that PMG showed a higher level of motivation, especially in regard to confidence, than NonPMG. Also, the mean test grade of PMG increased so that the initial difference of the test grade between the two groups significantly decreased. Although there was no difference between the two groups in study habits, the findings suggest that personal messages addressing specific individual problems raise the positive effects of MVEM constructed based on the integrated model. Future research directions are discussed.     

假如给我三天光明

我们大多数人把生活认为是理所当然的.我们知道,某一天我们一定会死,但通常我们把那天想象在遥远的将来.     

To give or not to give: children's and adolescents' sharing and moral negotiations in economic decision situations

This study interconnects developmental psychology of fair and moral behavior with economic game theory. One hundred eighty-nine 9- to 17-year-old students shared a sum of money as individuals and groups with another anonymous group (dictator game). Individual allocations did not differ by age but did by gender and were predicted by participants' preferences for fair allocations. Group decision making followed a majority process. Level of moral reasoning did not predict individual offers, but group members with a higher moral reasoning ability were more influential during group negotiations and in influencing group outcomes. The youngest participants justified offers more frequently by referring to simple distribution principles. Older participants employed more complex reasons to justify deviations from allocation principles.     

Temporal Contingency as an Independent Component of Parenting Behavior

Several theoretical conceptions emphasize the importance of prompt responses to infant's signals in providing them with early causal experiences. The present paper examines if a maternal tendency toward prompt responses can be identified by distributional analyses of maternal response latencies and if this response tendency can be shown for different communicative channels (in verbal/vocal, nonverbal, intermodal communication). In addition, the paper focuses on the relation between the temporal contingency of maternal behavior and measures of maternal interactional quality. Interactional sequences of 54 mother and 3-month-old infant dyads were analyzed using microanalytical assessment techniques and ratings of interactional quality. Distributional analyses of maternal expressions during face-to-face encounters revealed that promptness of responses toward infant signals with a short latency is a typical response tendency in maternal behavior. There are, however, individual differences between mothers, indicating that this response tendency is expressed in different communicative channels by individual mothers. This is shown by low correlations between the contingency indices of different communicative channels. The relation between contingency and rated indicators of interactional quality turned out to be rather small, indicating that maternal contingency may be conceptualized to contribute an independent factor to the quality of maternal interactional behavior.