2008, Vol.21, No.2

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 examined the effects of antonym and synonym generation on memory performance of elementary school student. The subjects were first- third- and fifth grade elementary school children. Each subject was shown visually a list of 20 words for 12 second per word via computer. For the antonym generation condition, subjects read aloud target words and generated antonym related target words. For the synonym generation condition, subjects generated synonym and other procedure was identical to those given in antonym generation condition. For the control condition, subjects merely read aloud target words. And then after subjects spent 30 seconds solving digit symbol, they were required to recall target words. Results showed that generation effect increased with grade, and antonym generation was the most useful in the first grade children and synonym generation was supreme effect in the fifth grade children. These results were interpreted in terms of semantic organization.

Rejection sensitivity is a disposition that a person readily perceive and overact to social rejection with anxiety and anger. Preliminary surveys and a main study was done to select rejective situations for measuring Korean children's rejection sensitivity. Data were gathered from 5th to 6th 355 graders attending at an elementary school in Ulsan city. In preliminary survey using twelve rejective situations in Downey's(1998) Children's Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire(CRSQ), it was found that most of Korean children would not expect rejection in several situations of CRSQ. Additional thirteen rejective situations for Korean children were constructed based on small group discussions about children's stressful life events. In main study, among 25 situations made up from CRSQ and preliminary survey, twelve rejective situations were selected that discriminated high rejection-sensitivity group from low rejection-sensitivity group based on rejection-relevant emotion and anticipated rejection. Two factors were found on selected 12 situations by factor analysis.

Epistemological understanding is a personal belief about the nature of knowledge (what is knowledge?) and the process of knowing (how does an individual understand the world?). The purpose of the study was to investigate epistemological understanding, especially epistemological thinking about the subjective and objective aspects of knowing, across various judgment domains (aesthetics, value, social world, and physical world) and to see if epistemological thinking varies depending on the grade level and students' fields of study. For this purpose, middle school students in 8th grade, high school students in 10th and 12th grades, and college sophomores participated in the study. The students completed the Epistemological Thinking Assessment (ETA). To summarize the results, the social domain appeared at a higher epistemological level than did the physical domain, indicating that students across grade levels had a more sophisticated epistemological understanding in the social domain than in the physical domain. Significant correlations were found between value judgment and knowledge domains and also between social and physical domains, but the correlations were not very strong, indicating that development does not occur evenly. As predicted, there was a general developmental pattern toward evaluativist thinking in the social domain; but in the physical domain, both absolutist and evaluativist thinking increased as the grade level increased. There were no grade differences in aesthetics and value judgment domains. Also, no significant differences were found in epistemological thinking by students' fields of study. Based on the results, domain-specific aspects of epistemological thinking and the importance of education in its development were discussed.