KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study examined whether earlier language abilities could predict the performance of false belief at a later time. Fifty-five children participated in the study, whose ages ranged from 3;2 to 3;11(M=3;7) at the beginning of the study. The children were tested 3 times at intervals of six-months. The three kinds of language tasks were used to measure the complement understanding; the infinitival complement of the mental verb‘want’the sentential complement of the mental verb‘think’and the communication verb‘say’. Receptive vocabularies were also measured. The false belief tasks included non-verbal false belief tasks, unexpected location tasks, and unexpected content tasks. The results of hierarchical regression analyses suggested that earlier language abilities, especially the understanding of the sentential complement, can predict the performance in the false belief tasks.

This study examined the relationship between theory of mind and social competence in preschool children. Children were tested on two kinds of mind understanding tasks: mind-reading and emotion-reading, and teachers were asked to rate Matson Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters, Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents, and a Measure of Aggression and Prosocial behaviors. Mind-reading tasks assessed the ability to interpret others' behaviors by reading their mental states, and emotion-reading tasks assessed the ability to read others' emotional states through their facial expressions. Participants were 48 five-year old children. The result showed that mind-reading was significantly related to social skill score. The empathy score was significantly related to the scores of social skill, inappropriate assertiveness, aggression and prosocial behaviors. For the girls, mind-reading predicted social skill score along with empathy. However, mind-reading predicted none of social behaviors for the boys. Empathy scores were the best predictor of social skill, inappropriate assertiveness, aggression, and prosocial behaviors for both. Finally, boys and girls did not differ in their scores on mind-understanding tasks. It was discussed that there is difference between children's theory of mind and the way how they employ their ToM in the social world, and the relationship between theory of mind and social competence is complex.

The present research examined how Korean infants interpret others' pointing actions. In Experiment 1, the infants in the touch condition were familiarized with an event in which the actor pointed to one of the two objects. After the positions of objects were switched, each infant received test events of two types: The actor pointed to the new goal object(new-goal event) or the old goal object(old-goal event). In the control condition, there was only one object during familiarization. As a result, the infants in the touch condition looked reliably longer at the new-goal event than the old-goal event. In contrast, the infants in the control condition looked about equally at both events. In Experiment 2, 9-month-olds looked reliably longer at the new-goal event even though there was a 3.5cm gap between the actor's index finger and the target object. In Experiment 3, 7-month-olds were tested in the same procedure as that of the touch condition in Experiment 1. They looked about equally at both events. The results showed that between 7 and 9-month-old Korean infants develop their ability to understand others' pointing actions as goal-directed.

In this study, it was tested whether the ability to recognize the emotional states through facial expression changes by age (university students, middle-aged, older adults), dimensions of emotion(pleasantness/unpleasantness dimensions), and face parts (whole face, eyes, mouth) during adulthood. A total 32 pictures of emotional facial expressions and emotion vocabularies were used as stimuli. In each trial, subjects were shown 4 pictures of emotional facial expressions and one emotion vocabulary. Subjects were told to choose one suitable facial expression which was matched to the emotion vocabulary. Older adults performed worse that the middle age. However, older adults' performances were not declined equal amount in all conditions: Older adults' performances were declined greater amount in reading the pleasant and unpleasant emotions from the eyes or mouth regions, but declined far less amount in reading the pleasant emotions from the whole face. The present results cannot be explained by the deterioration of cognitive abilities, but could be explained by the theory of affective optimization.

The current research explores Korean preschoolers' understanding of null-subject sentences using discourse information. The children listened to 4-sentence stories, while looking at pictures about the stories on a computer screen. In the last (target) sentence of each story, the subject was omitted and the referent of the omitted subject could be inferred from the preceding sentences. Both 5-years-old (Experiment 1) and 4-years-old (Experiment 2) children were likely to interpret omitted subjects as referring to the subject of the preceding sentence. This research is an initial attempt to investigate Korean preschoolers' sensitivity to discourse information when understanding ambiguous sentences in which the subject is omitted. The results will provide a foundation for further studies on the interplay between syntax and discourse in younger children's language comprehension.

The purpose of this study was to explain about life-course perspecive as an new alternative for the traditional developmental perspective and to suggest the future direction of developmental psychology. Life-course perspective being appeared in the 1970s encouraged the study of personal life in the changing contexts, valued the interactions between person and contexts, and took interest in the social structure, organization and reorganization of life course. Traditionally developmental psychologist was concerned about personal changes across time but not the effects of contexts. To apply life-course perspective to developmental psychology was expected to play the hightening the level of the developmental study.

The purpose of this study was how to examine the pathways of mothers' perfectionism and psychological controls on children’s perfectionism and depression. A total of 261 elementary school 5th and 6th grade students and their mothers in Seoul completed questionnaires. Data were analyzed by multiple regressions. As a results, mothers' other-oriented perfectionism influenced directly and indirectly through all of psychological control (love withdrawal, success-oriented psychological control and guilt feeling generating psychological control) on girls' socially-prescribed perfectionism and depression. On the other hand, mothers' other-oriented perfectionism influenced indirectly boys' socially prescribed perfectionism and depression through guilt feeling generated psychological control. To conclude, the effects of mothers' other-oriented perfectionism and psychological control on children's perfectionism and depression were stronger for girls than for boys

The Purpose of this study was to investigate the variables on adolescent's friends relationship. Independent variables were Individual and family environmental variables. The subjects were 1,064 - 1st and 2nd graders of several middle and high schools in Daegu. The major finding were as follows: First, adolescent's friends relationship was affected by sex, age, overt aggression, relational aggression and social self-esteem of individual variables. Second, adolescent's friends relationship was affected by father's attachment, father's control parenting and family support of family environmental variables. Third, Individual variables have great effect on adolescent's friends relationship than any other variables.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the physical and behavioral aspects of children's home environment at 3 years on the language development of the ages of 3 and 4 years. The total of 266 children(N=266) at 3 years, and 92 children among them again at 4 years were participated in this study. EC-HOME for the home environment and K-CDI and PPVT for children's language ability were completed by their mothers and investigators. The home environment was divided into the physical and behavioral domains. The results are as follow: First, there was a significant correlation between children's language ability and both aspects of home environment at 3 years, but no relationship with receptive vocabulary at 4 years. Second, mother's education level and behavioral domains of home environment were the predictors on expressive language, but for language comprehension were the parental behaviors and physical stimuli to prompt to learn. Especially, mother's education level and physical stimuli were important for language comprehension in low-income families. The results implied that the effect of parent's behaviors on children's language development could be understood in relation to the physical support providing to them in early childhood.

This study aimed to investigate how child client's aggressiveness, characteristics of counselor's intervention, and therapeutic relationship affect child client's resistance in counseling sessions. The subjects were children under individual play therapy with emotional, behavioral or social skill problems. All 36 child-therapist sets were analyzed. As for clients' variable, aggressiveness was found to have significant correlation with resistance to cooperation, and among characteristics of the intervention, the interpersonal climate and directiveness were related to resistance to cooperation. In addition, the interaction between these two variables proved to affect the resistance to communication. The quality of the therapeutic relationship perceived by the therapist had effect on resistance to cooperation through an interaction with characteristics of the intervention. When the therapist perceived positive emotional relationship as low, the resistance was affected by the interpersonal climate of the therapist intervention. And when the therapist perceived negative emotional relationship as low, the resistance was affected by the depth of the intervention. The result suggested that child client's resistance in counseling sessions should be considered as a complex phenomenon related with the child client's aggressiveness, characteristics of the intervention, therapeutic relationship and the interaction among them.