KJC Korea
Journal Central

The present study examined the hypothesis that children's theory of mind ability is related to their peer popularity. Fifty-one preschool children between the age of 4 and 6, and 67 second grade children completed a peer rating task to assess peer popularity. In addition, children were tested on six different false belief tasks. Teachers were asked to rate children's aggressive behavior, conventional social behavior, and intentional social behavior requiring theory of mind. Preschool children's popularity scores were significantly related to the theory of mind scores, the ratings of aggressive, conventional social, and intentional social behavior. In contrast, second grade children's popularity scores were related to the ratings of conventional social, and intentional social behavior, but not to the theory of mind scores. For the preschoolers group, the aggressive behavior was the best predictor of children's popularity, but for the second graders group it was the intentional social behavior. In addition, for the total group of children, the intentional social behavior was the best predictor of peer popularity. The pattern of results suggest that it is not the theory of mind ability itself that has impact on peer popularity. Rather, the social skills to put theory of mind ability to practical use is more important.

This study was aimed to investigate early predictors and impact of peer aggression and victimization on later behavior problems. A subgroup of children included in the Wisconsin Study of Child and Health (Essex, 2001) was assessed for child temperament, and maternal depression from infancy to preschool; child social perception skills in kindergarten; peer aggression and victimization in grade 1; and behavior problems in grade 3. Regression analyses showed that children are more likely to be aggressive or victimized in grade 1 if they earlier showed higher levels of anger-prone temperament, lower levels of social perception skills, and higher levels of maternal depression. Differential predictors were found for relational aggression and victimization: Girls are more likely to be relationally aggressive than boys; infants with high levels of reactive distress were more likely to be victimized in grade 1. Anger-prone temperament moderated the relation of maternal depression to peer problems: Children whose mothers were depressed were more likely to be aggressive or victimized if they were angry-prone and impulsive. Peer aggression and victimization assessed in grade 1 explained both internalizing and externalizing behaviors 2 years later as well as concurrently, even after controlling for early predictors (risk factors). The long-term prospective data in this study contributes to better understanding of how peer aggression and victimization develop and how they impact later behavior problems.

This study was designed to explore behavior and developmental evaluation in preterms at risk, full-terms at risk, and normal infants. Specifically the purposes of the study were to investigate behavior rating scale based on Korean Bayley Scales of Infant Development-Ⅱ(K-BSID-Ⅱ)(2004). The subjects were 116 infants, 39 preterms at risk infants, 38 full-terms at risk infants and 39 normal infants. The data were analyzed through Kruskal-Wallis, a correlation and multiple regrression test to examine the behavioral ratings. It was shown that there were significant differences among three groups in attention/arousal, orientation/engagement and motor quality and the sum of the behavior rating scale. In the terms of behavior rating scale, mental developmental index and psychomotor developmental index, preterms at risk-, full-terms at risk-, and normal infants showed substantial corrrelations to each other. There were some differences on the behavior rating scale depending on the age of the subjects. For the infants of 1 to 5 months of age, mental development index and pyschomotor develpoment index are correlated while behavior rating scale and psychomotor development index are correlated for the infants of 6 to 12 months of age. Authors discussed in terms of canalization theory and future infant developmental study.

The purpose of this study was to identify longitudinally the continuity and stability of maternal verbal behavior, and the relationship between maternal verbal behavior and infant's vocabulary in early infancy. The total of 48 mothers and their infants were participated in this study. At 6 months and again at 10 months, dyads were videotaped at free play in laboratory room and at home. Data on mother's verbal behavior derived from transcripts of spontaneous speech from the play and categorized based on Hart and Risley(1995), and data on infant's vocabulary were measured from MCDI-K. Results were as follows: first, mother's verbal interactional behaviors and language input showed stability of individual variation across ages. Second, mother's verbal behaviors were increased as infant's age increased. Finally, mother's verbal interactional behaviors showed partially the significant correlation with infant's vocabulary at 15 months.

This study purposed to examine the role of mutual exclusivity constraint versus pragmatic intention in inferring the meaning of Korean words. Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 addressed the issue by using the pictures of artifacts. Forty eight children whose age ranges from 3;0 to 3;11(M=3;7) were equally allocated to three conditions, i. e., an unintended condition, an explicitly intended condition, and an implicitly intended condition. The results showed that the mutual exclusivity of object labels were preserved in the unintended condition, while being overridden by the pragmatic intention in the explicitly intended condition. The procedure of experiment 2 was the same as that of experiment 1, except using the pictures of animals. Forty eight children whose age ranges from 2;11 to 4;0 (M=3;7) participated. The results replicated the findings of experiment 1 with respect to the role of mutual exclusivity vs. intention in word learning. In addition, children showed the tendency of understanding the novel words as category names in the explicitly intended condition. The procedure of experiment 3 was the same as that of the previous experiments, except using the pictures of human beings. Forty eight children whose age ranges from 3;0 to 4;1 (M=3;8) participated. The results in general replicated the previous findings with respect to the role of mutual exclusivity vs. intention in word learning. In addition, children showed the tendency of understanding the novel word as a proper name in the explicitly intended condition. Summing up, the mutual exclusivity constraint could play a role in Korean word learning, but it could be overcome when being faced with the conflicted pragmatic intention. Moreover, children might treat a novel word as a proper name so as to override the mutual exclusivity of objects when they were attributed to intentionality.

This study examined the relations between several variables and adolescent-mother conflicts with middle and high school students. ANOVA and regression analysis revealed male students and middle school students had more conflicts with their mother than female and high school ones. Also the male students with low levels of physical maturity and subjective age, being related with only male students, had more conflicts with their mother than their counterparts. Futhermore the students with higher levels of attachment to mother, father and peer had less conflicts with their mother than ones with lower levels of attachment to three figures. Interestingly male students had more conflicts with their mother than female ones even when having high levels of attachment to their mother.

This study was conducted to examine the generational differences and similarities in regard to value orientations and the perception of adolescents' daily behaviors. A total of 1,067 participants (464 adolescents, 465 adults, and 138 older adults) took part in this study. The results exhibited both similarities and differences across the generations. First, although young people valued marriage and family not as highly as older people did, young as well as older people put greater significance on domestic peace relative to others. Second, parents and grandparents were more likely to rate adolescents' behaviors such as chatting on the internet all night as problematic than adolescents would. However, all the generations unanimously considered adolescents' adult-ignoring behaviors to be the most problematic. The implications of these results were discussed.

The present study investigated development of coordinated joint attention and explored characteristics of mother's behavior that may be related to its development. For these ends, 78 infants were longitudinally observed in their interaction with their mothers at 9, 12, 15 and 18 months of age. Observations were coded using state-based coding system (Adamson et al, 1998) that included states of unengagement, person engagement, object engagement, on-looking and supported joint attention as well as coordinated joint attention. In addition, infants' and mother's pointing behaviors were observed in order to investigate its relation to the development of coordinated joint attention. The results of this study provide evidence for the two main conclusions. First, the amount of coordinated joint attention and supported joint attention increased, while other states declined or did not change with age. Second, development of coordinated joint attention was closely related to supported joint attention and mother's pointing behavior. These results suggest that mothers indeed are skilled adults who can scaffold their infant's early attempt to coordinate their attention in a social context.