2005, Vol.18, No.3

THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.67

pISSN : 1229-0718 / eISSN : 2671-6542
https://journal.kci.go.kr/baldal

This study explored the developmental pattern of gender schema and its differentiation from middle childhood through middle adolescence in terms of multifactorial theory. The 4th(n=215), 6th(n=215), 7th(n=194), 9th(n=173) grade students were given 2 gender related measures, one for sex-typing of others and the other for sex-typing of self. The result showed that the egalitarian attitude increased across grades and both boys and girls gave more egalitarian responses on cross-sexual items. Boys endorsed more feminine items as self descriptive across grades but less masculine items between the 6th and 7th grade. Girls endorsed less feminine items between the 4th and 6th grade, endorsed more between the 6th and 7th grade and there was no significant change since then. Students were less likely to differentiate between masculine and feminine traits compared to occupations and activities in both measures. The correlation analysis showed a pattern that the egalitarian attitudes across domains were positively related with self endorsement of cross-sexual items. Among boys, gender attitude about others and self endorsement were separate components of gender schema. Among girls, self endorsement was further differentiated into masculinity and femininity. The result confirms the multifactorial theory of gender schema.

This research examines the causal explanations that 10 Korean-speaking children gave in everyday conversations recorded from 1;11 to 6;4 years of age. We analyze 4,957 codable explanations by focusing on the entity targeted for explanations(e. g., person, animal, object), the explanatory mode of causal reasoning(e. g., psychological, physical, biological knowledge), and interrelations between these elements. The results showed that children's explanations dealt with various entities(persons, animals, and objects) and incorporated diverse modes(physical, biological, psychological, and social-conventional reasoning). Children can also pair the entities with their appropriate explanatory modes. This means that children's explanation can be appropriately constrained by a flexible causal reasoning system. We conclude that children use distinguishably three basic reasoning systems as early as two years of age; physical, psychological, and biological systems. This can be interpreted in the sense that these reasoning systems might incorporate intriguing aspects of naive theories of physics, biology, and psychology.

The present study investigated children's understanding of the distinction between living and nonliving things and children's use of causal mechanisms. Children, aged 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 participated. They were given a series of questions, which measured children's understanding of several biological properties, including growth, nutrient intake, overeating(overwatering) and underfeeding(underwatering), factors that affect plant growth, reproduction, and reincarnation. The results showed that children understood only a small portion of the distinguishing criteria at age 3 and improved with age. Nonetheless, many(about 45%) 11-year olds do not attain all the criteria. Also, older children employed causal mechanisms more frequently and relied less on the perceptual properties and more on their categorical knowledge when making an explanation. Among biological properties, reproduction was easiest for children to grasp, which was followed by growth and nutrient intake, and then overfeeding/underfeeding and factors that affect plant growth and reincarnation. The animal category was the easiest to understand and there was no difference between the plant and nonliving thing categories. Three- and 5-year olds (or 5- and 7-year olds) were different from other age groups respectively, and 7-, 9-, and 11 year olds tended to be grouped together when their knowledge on biological properties were compared.