KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study examined the differences in cognitive and affective empathy in six types of participant roles in bullying. Cognitive and affective empathy was measured using three self-report questionnaires on empathy, Korean version of EQ-C (Cha, et al., 2011), BEI (Bryant, 1982), and IRI (Davis, 1983), on a sample of 299 Korean children in the fifth and sixth grade. Based on the results of a peer nomination questionnaire on participant roles (Sutton & Smith, 1999), the children were assigned to one of six roles: “bullies,” “reinforcers,” “assistants,” “defenders,” “outsiders,” and “victims.” It was found that affective empathy scores were higher for defenders than for victims, outsiders, assistants, and reinforcers, whereas cognitive empathy scores were higher for defenders than for victims, but were not higher than those for outsiders, assistants, and reinforcers. The results demonstrated that defenders displayed both aspects of empathy, affective and cognitive, but victims displayed neither. In contrast, bullies displayed cognitive but not affective empathy.

This study explored life satisfaction in geriatric population. The following tests were administered to 103 people over the age of 60: mindreading tasks and cognitive tasks, personality questionnaires measuring extroversion and agreeableness, and questionnaires measuring the amount of social participation in activities and social adaptation. The analysis revealed a strong correlation between mindreading abilities and cognitive abilities, but was not correlated with agreeableness. Additionally, mindreading abilities was negatively correlated with life satisfaction. Furthermore, life satisfaction was positively correlated with agreeableness, extroversion, economic status, and the amount of social participation. It was expected that older people who were good mindreaders would demonstrate more appropriate social interactions and better social adaptation. However, it was found that an appropriate level of insensitivity to other people’s mental states was associated with increased life satisfaction. Society's widespread negative views about older people, and the loneliness from decreasing social relationships, are two possible explanations for these counterintuitive results.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the home environment and child development at 3 years of age on intelligence development at 7 years. The participants were 143 mother-child dyads whose home environment and child development were measured using the mothers' reports when the children were 3 years old. At 7 years, the children’s intelligence was evaluated using the Korean version of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III. The results indicated a significant positive correlation between home environment and child development, as well as positive correlations between child development and intelligence, and between home environment and intelligence. Educational stimuli, acceptance, and linguistic stimuli from the home environment demonstrated significant positive correlations with intelligence. Positive correlations were found between intelligence and each of the following: fine-motor, linguistic, and cognitive development. The results of the structural equation model showed that home environment at 3 years had a small influence on intelligence at 7 years, and home environment had direct positive effects on child development. Furthermore, the stage of development had direct positive effects on intelligence at the age of 7. This study suggests that home environments and the developmental levels of children in early childhood affect their intellectual development in middle childhood.

This study explored the effects of interviewers’ social support and cognitive training on the accuracy of children’s memory of a potentially stressful event. Children (N = 128) aged 3-12 years, who were scheduled to undergo a minor dental procedure participated in the study. Overall, the results of this study were consistent with and extended the findings of previous studies that social support improved the accuracy of children’s source monitoring. Younger children were more easily influenced by an interviewer’s social support than older children. Furthermore, for children who were evaluated as relatively more shy than others in the same-age group, the accuracy of their report improved considerably when an interviewer provided social support. By creating a naturalistic situation (i.e., dental operative procedure), this study was able to identify significant variables that affect the way children report stressful experiences and found out ways in which the reliability of the children’s reports might be facilitated by a supportive interviewer. The findings provided detailed information about the internal and external factors contributing to children’s motivation and ability to give a reliable report of a stressful event. The results of the present study will be particularly helpful in providing guidelines for interviewing children in legal settings.

The present study established the validity for the Maternal Fetal Attachment Scale (MFAS) for use with Korean mothers during pregnancy. The Maternal Fetal Attachment Scale (MFAS) (Cranley, 1981) was translated into Korean, and it used revised items that were rated on a 4-point Likert scale (unlike the original MFAS that used a 5-point Likert scale). Therefore, validity and reliability were not sufficiently established for the Korean translation. Sjorgen et al. (2004) selected 16 items useful for measuring early and late attachment during pregnancy from a total of 24 items in Cranley’s MFAS. The present study attempted to validate the MFAS based on Sjorgen et al.'s study using 16 items, previous research, and bi-lingual experts. The main results are as follows: the total Cronbach's α of MFAS 16 items was α = 0.87, with 0.75 ≤ α < 0.87. Additionally, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of MFAS indicated a good model fit and model economy, implying that it has good construct validity. Furthermore, a significant negative correlation between total and sub-dimension MFAS scores and post-partum depression at 6 months were obtained, indicating good predictive validity. The implications, limitations, and future research were discussed.

Prior research suggests that more than boys, girls have a stronger tendency to trust a testimony by an adult female. The present study examined whether this selective trust resulted from a same-sex preference that appears during preschool years, or to a general preference for a primary caregiver-like figure. In the experiment, children were first shown dishonest adult male playing games with another adult. They were then asked to play with this adult male. The children’s tendency to believe the adult male’s testimony was observed during this play session. Consistent with previous findings, our results showed that 4-year-old girls were less prone to believe a dishonest adult male’s testimony whereas they were much more willing to believe the dishonest testimony given by the same-sex adult. However, this tendency was not observed among 3 and 4-year-old boys. The findings suggested that girls tend to trust female adults based on a same-sex preference in situations requiring a judgment of accuracy or truthfulness. Furthermore, the results implied that 3-year olds might struggle to overcome the tendency to trust an adult’s testimony.

Research shows that children’s abilities to inhibit thoughts and behaviors predict academic and social successes later in life. In addition, a child’s socioeconomic status (SES) is known to predict inhibitory control and general executive functions. However, careful examination of the literature revealed that several studies reporting these findings had the following limitations: (1) they were conducted in North and South America where the factor of race was not sufficiently controlled, (2) they focused on children in schooling years, and (3) they relied on comparing arbitrary groups divided by various SES criteria. The present study tested 78 Korean preschoolers aged 3–6 to examine the unique effects of SES on the development of inhibitory control in early childhood by controlling factors of age and verbal abilities. The results indicate that maternal education, measured in the total number of schooling years, uniquely predicted inhibitory control of Korean preschoolers. This corroborated previous findings, further suggesting that parental education is critical to the development of executive functions in early childhood regardless of race, age, and verbal abilities.

The present study used a preferential looking paradigm to examine the types of structural cues used by 24- and 21-months-old Korean children when processing the meaning of sentences with a novel verb in Korean. In the first two of the three experiments, participants were shown two videos positioned adjacent to each other, depicting independent or causative behaviors, and were made to listen to sentences with a nominative or accusative case marker. It was found that in Experiment 1, the 24-month-old infants looked at causative rather than independent behaviors for longer in the accusative condition, but not in the nominative condition. In Experiment 2, the 21-month old infants looked at independent behaviors for longer durations regardless of the sentence type. In Experiment 3, one- and two-noun sentences were used without any case markers. The 21-month old infants looked at causative behaviors for longer when hearing two-noun rather than one-noun sentences. These results suggest that by the age of 24 months, Korean children use morphological cues when understanding the meaning of a novel verb, while younger children might exploit the number of noun cues rather than case markers.