Psychological Development and Education ›› 2011, Vol. 27 ›› Issue (6): 607-618.

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Relational Cognition of Resilient Children

XI Ju-zhe1,3, SANG Biao1, ZUO Zhi-hong2   

  1. 1. School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China;
    2. School of Preschool Education and Special Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China;
    3. Department of Psychology and Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045-7556, USA
  • Online:2011-11-15 Published:2011-11-15

Abstract: The present study explores resilient and nonresilient children's relational cognition at the very beginning when they seek to build trusting relationship with and ask for help from other people,examining the hypotheses that,in comparison with nonresilient children,resilient children have more accurate and quicker cognition of interpersonal relationship type,hold more positive and quicker cognition of interpersonal relationship characteristics in neutral/ambiguous situation.Two self-developed experimental programs,including one set of interpersonal relationship type cognition tasks and another set of interpersonal relationship characteristics cognition tasks,were administered to 99 resilient and 176 nonresilient children who were identified by a converging technique.Subjects' response including response time on the two sets of relational cognition tasks were automatically recorded on computer.ANCOVAs with covariates of age and gender were conducted to test group differences in scores and natural log-transformed response times of the two tasks.Results turned out to partially support the hypotheses: Resilient children scored higher on the interpersonal relationship type cognition tasks,while on the tasks of interpersonal relationship characteristics cognition,they got lower scores in both the positive and negative dimensions in a neutral/ambiguous interpersonal relationship situation,with their scores falling within a significantly narrower range on the negative-positive continuum than nonresilient children.No significant differences were found in response time on both tasks.It was implied that accurate and relatively cautious but positively biased cognition of interpersonal relationships,as an important subjective factor,could empower a child to efficiently seek from and build interpersonal relationships with other poeple to gain richer social support resources,which is beneficial for him/her to better cope with severe stresses/adversities.

Key words: Resilience, children, cognition of interpersonal relationship type, cognition of interpersonal relationship characteristics, ecosystem theory

CLC Number: 

  • B844.1
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