KJC Korea
Journal Central

The purpose of this study was to explore conflict in relationships between middle-aged Koreans and their parents. We classified areas of conflict and investigated potential gender differences. We used an open-ended questionnaire, which was completed by 136 middle-aged participants (aged 40-59 years). Our analysis revealed 23 conflicts classified into 3 areas: relationship with one’s parents, self-management by elderly parents, and problems involving grandchildren. The most frequently reported area of conflict was relationship with one’s parents. Women experienced more conflict than men. Specific responses in this area included: favoritism, disregard, lack of interest in and care for middle-aged children, burden of support, and excessive devotion. Women experienced more conflict in term of both favoritism and lack of interest in and care.

We investigated the development of children’s negative emotionality and examined transactional relations between child negative emotionality and maternal depression in early childhood. Participants were 2078 children (49% female) and their parents who were part of the Panel Study of Korean Children (PSKC) by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education (KICCE). Families were assessed annually when their children were 0–4 years old. Results from latent growth modeling indicate that parental ratings of child negative emotionality show a positive, nonlinear increase with growth decelerating over time. Moreover, higher initial levels of maternal depression were associated with higher concurrent levels of child negative emotionality. Higher initial levels of and growth in child negative emotionality significantly predicted maternal depression 4 years later. These findings support transactional processes between child temperament and maternal mental health in early childhood.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among paternal attachment, maladaptive anger expression, emotional clarity, and self-efficacy. Participants were 379 middle school students from the Seoul, Gyeonggi, Gyeongnam, and Gangwon provinces. Structural Equation Modeling was conducted to analyze self-report data. The results indicate that both self-efficacy and the combination of self-efficacy and emotional clarity significantly mediate the relationship between paternal attachment and maladaptive anger expression. Based on these findings, we discuss effective intervention strategies for adolescents who have trouble with maladaptive anger expression caused by a low level of attachment to their father. The strategic implications for interventions with fathers are also addressed.

In this study we explored structural correlations among adolescent proneness to shame and guilt, ruminative and reflective response styles, and school adjustment as well as gender differences in these correlations. We found significant correlations for all factors except proneness to shame and school adjustment. The results of the structural equation modeling for each factor show that proneness to shame predicts school maladjustment, ruminative response, and reflective response. In addition, proneness to guilt and ruminative response predict school adjustment. The results of the mediation analysis indicate that a reflective response style has an indirect effect in the relationship between proneness to shame and school adjustment as well as the relationship between proneness to guilt and school adjustment. Greater proneness to guilt increased the level of school adjustment via response style; similarly, greater proneness to shame decreased the level of school maladjustment via response style. We also found significant gender differences in the path coefficients. In male adolescents, a reflective response style mediates the relationship between proneness to shame and school adjustment; moreover, proneness to shame decreased the negative effect on school adjustment.

This study investigated cross-language transfer from Korean morphological awareness to English, and the relationship between morphological awareness and word reading and writing in Korean Hangul and English, among Korean 5th graders. The results show that Korean morphological awareness contributed to English morphological awareness over and above English vocabulary. Specifically, derivational and compound awareness in Korean uniquely explained derivational awareness in English, and Korean compound awareness explained English compound awareness. In addition, English morphological awareness contributed to Hangul reading and writing over and above Korean vocabulary and morphological awareness. The final beta values indicate that English derivational awareness independently explained significant variance in reading and writing in both Korean and English. In addition, Korean derivational awareness explained English reading, and Korean compound awareness explained Hangul writing. Our results suggest that morphological awareness transfers from Korean to English, and that derivational awareness is important in reading and writing in both Korean and English.

According to socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 1995), older people focus more on emotional information than on factual information because emotionally meaningful goals become more important than the knowledge-related goals as the perceived remaining time to live diminishes with age. This study was performed to test whether the types (emotional vs. factual) of information one considered in a political choice-making situation differed according to age. After reading the candidate's speech, each elderly adult and college student was asked whether s/he was going to choose the candidate and to justify her/his decision. The rate of factual decisions (decisions based on factual information) was higher in both male and female college students and in elderly men, and the rate of emotional decisions was higher in elderly women. When a word-recognition test was administered after 20 minutes, college students showed better recognition of factual words than emotional words regardless of the type of information they considered in decision-making. In contrast, the elderly adults showed better recognition of words consistent with the type of information they considered in decision-making. The present results partially support socioemotional selectivity theory.

Recent studies have suggested that executive function (EF) abilities, in particular inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, relate to reading development from preschool years. The present study examined the unique importance of EFs for the early Korean Hangul reading. We tested 125 Korean children (ages 4-6 years) on tasks of inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, working memory, Korean word reading, phonological awareness, listening comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. With age, vocabulary knowledge, and working memory capacity statistically controlled, a prepotent response inhibition measured by Go/no-go task and interference suppression measured by Flanker task contributed unique variance to phonological awareness. Additionally, the prepotent response inhibition and cognitive flexibility significantly predicted listening comprehension. These results highlight the unique roles of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility for the development of Korean Hangul reading in beginning readers of Korean.

In the current research we used the violation-of-expectation paradigm to examine whether 10-month-olds use linguistic cues when understanding others’ goals. During four (short-familiarization condition) or six (long-familiarization condition) familiarization trials, 10-month-olds heard a female agent saying “Here’s a modi!” twice and saw her grasping one of two objects. The locations of the two objects were switched during the pre-display trial. During test trials, infants heard a different linguistic cue (“Here’s a papu!”), and saw the actor reach for either the same object as before (the old-goal event) or the other object (the new-goal event). Ten-month-olds looked longer at the new-goal event than at the old-goal event in the short-familiarization condition, whereas they looked about equally at the two events in the long-familiarization condition. These results demonstrate 10-month-olds’ understanding that an agent’s novel verbal information may signal a change in her upcoming actions.

The present study is designed to investigate relations among mothers’ emotional ambivalence over emotional expressiveness, the parenting attitudes, and the behavioral problems of children For these ends, 321 mothers of preschoolers (4∼7 years old) completed questionnaires including ambivalence over emotional expressiveness (AEQ), parenting style (PBI), and Korean-Child Behavior Check List (K-CBCL). The results of this study revealed that mothers’ ambivalence over emotional expressiveness had a significant effect both on parenting attitudes and on children's externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. Mothers who experienced ambivalence over emotional expressiveness tended to be less affectionate and their children tended to have bigger external or internal problems, suggesting that mother’s parenting attitude mediates between their attitude toward emotional expressiveness and their children’s mental health.

The current study investigated whether infants could infer others’ goals by using morphological information. In Experiment 1, 19-month-olds were familiarized with scenes in which an actor slid one of two objects forward and backward, uttering a novel word as either a verb (verb condition) or a noun (noun condition). During the pre-test display, the positions of the two objects were switched; the prior goal object was placed within a short frame and the other object was placed within a long frame. In the test trial, the actor grasped the non-slidable prior goal object (short frame/prior goal event) or the slidable non-prior goal object (long frame/non-prior goal event). Infants in the verb condition looked longer at the short frame/prior goal event than at the long frame/non-prior goal event. Infants in the noun condition looked about equally at the two events. In Experiment 2, in which no novel word was uttered during familiarization trials, we found the same pattern as in the noun condition of Experiment 1. Thus, verbs, but not nouns, led infants to interpret the actor’s goal as an action style. Experiment 3, in which 15-month-olds participated in the task used in Experiment 1, demonstrated that infants’ ability to use morphological information when understanding others’ goals develops between 15 and 19 months.