Table of Content

15 September 2014, Volume 30 Issue 5

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Representation Patterns of Children’s and Adults’ Fraction Estimation on Different Number Lines

LU Chun, GUO Hong-Li, SI Ji-wei, SUN Yan

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  449-456. 

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44 sixth-graders and 40 college students were tested by Number-Position task (NP) and Position-Number task (PN) on 0-1 and 1/100-1/10 number lines to explore children's and adults' representation patterns of fractions estimation. Results showed that:1)Two groups followed a linear pattern in both NP and PN tasks on 0-1 number line, and followed a logarithmic pattern on NP task and an exponential pattern on PN task on 1/100-1/10 number line.; 2) the percentage of error for NP task was higher than PN task for children and adults,and sixth-graders made more error than the adults did on the 0-1 and 1/100-1/10 number lines.

The Development of Chinese Orthographic Awareness in Pre-school Children

LIU Ni-na, TONG Wen, YAN Guo-li

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  457-465. 

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It is widely reported that the acquirement of orthographic awareness is an important aspect of emergent literacy which linked to the processing of reading. Have the preschool children being in the period of emergent literacy begun to develop the orthographic awareness and how far? Two studies were designed to investigate the development of Chinese orthographic awareness in preschool children. In study 1, 152 pre-school children aged from 3 to 7 were instructed to complete the character decision task containing 4 different kinds of stimulus: non-characters with the radical in illegal form(IC), non-characters with the radical in illegal position (ICP), pseudo-characters and real characters. The results showed that children in bottle class acquired nothing about orthographic knowledge; in comparison, the level of radical position awareness increased significantly for the children in middle class; and both the level of radical position awareness and radical awareness improved significantly for children in top class than that for children in bottle and middle class. Additionally, the level of children's radical position awareness was higher than that of radical awareness in top class. In study 2, the eye movements of 24 children in top class were recorded as they did the character decision task as same as in study 1.The result showed that children paid more attention on the target radicals of IC/ICP than that of pseudo-characters. To conclude, the results of current two studies using different methods consistently indicated that pre-school children had acquired the awareness of radical position as well as the awareness of radical before they received formal reading instruction. However, the level was still low.

The Effects of Empathy as Contextual Variable on Violence Attitude

LI Xiao-ping, YAN Hong-lei, YUN Xiang, CHEN Chen

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  466-473. 

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Empathy refers to the degree to which a person subjectively identifies and commiserates with a victim and feels emotional distress. Past research has demonstrated the close relationship between empathy and violent attitudes or behaviors. Past findings also suggested that empathy was negatively associated with violence and aggression, and positively associated with prosocial behaviors. In most studies, however, empathy measures were almost always based on self-report scales in which participants indicated the extent to which they empathized with, felt sympathy for, or felt sorry for a particular person or a group of people. In our research, we experimentally manipulated empathy as a contextual variable. We hypothesized that when people were primed with empathy, their attitudes toward violence would be reduced. Specifically, we expected that unconsciously primed feelings of empathy would decrease people's approval of violence. Two experiments examined the impact of priming empathy on people's implicit and explicit attitudes toward violence. In experiment 1, 131 undergraduates (76 female) were randomly assigned into either the empathy prime condition or the neutral/control condition. Participants were given a word search task that served as the prime. For participants in the empathy prime condition, the word search task contained 13 words related to the concept of empathy (e.g., concern, sensitive, share, care, etc.) and 5 neutral words. For participants in the neutral prime condition, the word search task only contained 18 neutral words. Participants then completed the violence Implicit Association Test (violence IAT). In Experiment 2, 206 students (108 female) followed the same procedure as experiment 1. After the empathy priming, the participants fulfilled a violent attitude scale, which served as an explicit measure for attitude toward violence. The results indicate that participants in the empathy prime and neutral prime conditions did not differ significantly in their implicit or explicit attitudes toward violence. However, an interaction effect between empathy and sex emerged with regard to explicit attitudes, such that explicit attitudes toward violence significantly reduced after the empathy prime for male participants, but not for female participants. These results suggest that the activating feelings of empathy do not weaken the linking of violence and negative cognition. The effects of empathy on reducing violence depend on the cognitive processing of self-awareness and individuals' dispositional empathy.

The Relationship between Bullying/victimization and Peer Network among Children：based on p^* Model

CHEN Guang-hui

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  474-481. 

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The development of statistical method and software based on relational data provided the necessary condition for research on the relationship between bullying/victimization and peer network. In this paper, one high bullying/victimization class and one low bullying/victimization class were selected from 10 classes among four primary schools, and p^* model was used. The results showed that the peer network of low bullying/victimization class tended to include more open peer relational structures, such as 2-star, 3-star and 4-star; however, the peer network of high bullying/victimization class tended to include much more close peer relational structures, such as triangle and isolate. For bullies, they were all in marginalized position, and there was no significant relation between bullying behavior and position in peer relational structures. For victims, there was also no significant relation between victimization experience and position in peer relational structure, however, the victims in low bullying/victimization class were all in marginalized position, and part of victims in high bullying/victimization class were in central position of close peer relational structures as part of victims in marginalized position.

Cumulative Ecological Risk and Adolescents’ Academic and Social Competence：The Compensatory and Moderating Effects of Sense of Responsibility to Parents

BAO Zhen-zhou, LI Dong-ping, ZHANG Wei, WANG Yan-hui, SUN Wen-qiang, ZHAO Li-yan

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  482-495. 

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To investigate whether sense of responsibility to parents is a compensatory and a protective factor in the relations between cumulative ecological risk and adolescents' academic and social competence, a total of 613 adolescents (mean age=13.96 years; 372 girls) participated in this study. Multiple regression analyses showed that: (a) the cumulative ecological risk was negatively associated with academic competence and social competence in boys and girls. (b) Sense of responsibility to parents was positively related to girls' academic competence and boys' social competence, thus it was a compensatory factor in the relationship between cumulative ecological risk and adolescents' competence. (c) Sence of responsibility to parents buffered the negative effect of cumulative ecological risk on girls' academic competence; however, it enhanced the negative effect of cumulative ecological risk on girls' social competence. Thus, there was a cost of resilience. (d) The moderating effects of sense of responsibility to parents in the relations between cumulative ecological risk and boys' two domains of competence were not significant. In conclusion, there was a cost of resilience at least for some children, and we should not be over-optimistic about the resilience of adolescents experiencing severe adversity.

How the Belief in a Just World Influence College Student’s Intention to Help People in Need：The Role of Attribution of Responsibility and the Cost of Helping

JI Wang-hua, ZHANG Lan-ge, KOU Yu

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  496-503. 

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We conducted two studies to examine the effect of the attribution of responsibility and the cost of helping on the relationship between belief in a just world (BJW) and intention to help people in need, using BJW scale and hypothetical scenarios about helping. Study 1 (n =198) found that both BJW and the attribution of responsibility positively predicted the intention to help people in need. After controlling for grade, gender and social desirability, the attribution of responsibility and BJW accounted for 5.7% and 6% of the variance of intention to help, respectively. In Study 2 (n =415), we manipulated the attribution of responsibility and the cost of helping. We found that the effect of BJW on intention to help was moderated by attribution of responsibility and cost of helping, such that only when the cost of helping was low and people in need was not responsible for his plight, BJW positively predicted intention to help. Implications for promoting prosocial behavior are discussed.

Types of Preschoolers’ School Readiness and Their Relationship with Self-confidence and Anxiety

GAO Bing-cheng

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  504-511. 

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744 preschoolers have been investigated for their school readiness with latent profile analysis and discriminate analysis to explore types of school readiness and their differences of self-confidence and anxiety. It was found as follows: (1) Children school readiness level was correlated with parent educational differences, but there existed little gender difference. (2) Preschoolers' school readiness could be divided into three types, including mature type, common type and backward type. Students of mature type had the highest level of school readiness; students of backward type had the lowest level of school readiness; while preschoolers of common type had the intermediate school readiness.(3)Preschoolers' school readiness had significant positive correlation ship with their self-confidence and negative correlation ship with anxiety; Preschoolers with different types of school readiness had significant differences in their self-confidence and anxiety.

Bilingual Language Proficiency and Mental Set Shifting in Cognitive Control

XIE Zhi-long

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  512-519. 

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The study aimed to investigate the impact of language proficiency on the aspect of mental set shifting in cognitive control. By administering the experiments of language switch and task switch, two unbalanced Chinese-English bilingual groups (40 participants, mean age=20.30), homogeneous in L1 proficiency but differing in L2 proficiency, were compared. The results found better performance for the high L2 proficiency group in language switch but no group difference in task switch. The results indicated that L2 proficiency did not exert a significant impact upon mental set shifting in cognitive control. Nevertheless, regression analysis indicated that L2 proficiency did not correlate with mental set shifting but L2 use significantly predicted switch costs and language switching frequency significantly predicted mix costs. These results suggest that L2 use and language switching frequency may be important variables modulating mental set shifting. The findings are insightful to the theory that bilingualism enhances cognitive control and provide further evidence to clarify the specific source of bilingual advantage and to clarify the specific aspect of cognitive control that may be affected.

Relationship among Self-appraisals, Others’ Actual Appraisals and Reflected Appraisals on the Teachers’ Teaching Ability of Normal College Students

HU Chun-mei, YUE Cai-zhen, HE Hua-min, YANG Dan-dan

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  520-526. 

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According to the questionnaire investigation on the relationship among self-appraisals, others' actual appraisals and reflected appraisals in the teaching ability of 36 normal college students, The results indicated: (1) the self-appraisals and reflected appraisals were obviously below others' actual appraisals. (2) comparing with the specific others, the generalized others' actual appraisals and reflected appraisals had more influence on self-appraisals. (3) the self-appraisals had medium and low correlation with others' actual appraisals, while medium and high correlation with reflected appraisals. (4) the reflected appraisals had mediating effects on the relation of others' actual appraisals and self-appraisals on the practice teaching ability. The self-appraisals were not consistent with others' actual appraisals and reflected appraisals, others' actual appraisals influenced self-appraisals through reflected appraisals.

Child Abuse and Motivation to Abstain from Drugs：The Mediating Role of Self-Concept

LU Feng-ying, TANG Yong-long, CAO Meng-lu, LIU Xiao-jun

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  527-532. 

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This study aimed at exploring child abuse of the people who are receiving treatment because of addicting in drugs, and the relationship between child abuse, self-concept and motivation to abstain from drugs. Childhood Trauma Questionnaires-28 Item Short Form (CTQ-SF), Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS) and Questionnaires on Motivation to Abstain from Drugs were administered to the sample consisted of 771(male520, female251) detoxification addicts. The results showed that: (1) Child abuse was very common in the mandatory detoxification addicts (56.7%), especially physical neglect and emotion neglect. (2) Significant negative association was found between child abuse and self-concept, motivation to abstain from drugs, and self-concept significantly positive correlation with motivation to abstain from drugs. (3) Self-concept played partially mediating role between child abuse and motivation to abstain from drugs. This empirical study suggested that it was important to consider child abuse experience, and improve these people's self-concept and motivation when offer the help to mandatory detoxification addicts.

The Deficit Characteristics of Attentional Focus Switching Function in Online Game Addicts

ZHANG Bao, HUANG Sai, HOU Qiu-xia

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  533-539. 

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The characteristic of cognitive deficits in the online game addicts is one of hot issues concerned by numerous researchers. Here, adopting the attentional focus task, we Required 14 game addicts and 14 normal participants to perform attentional focus switching task within phonological loop, within visuospatial sketchpad and between them, then compared the switching cost between two groups. The results showed that the switching cost was significant greater for game addicts than normal participants only in the task of switching within visuospatial sketchpad, however, no significant differences was found in the other switching task. These results indicated that there was a specific deficit on the attentional focus switching function for the online game addicts.

College Students Rely on Mobile Internet Making Impact on Alienation：the Role of Society Supporting Systems

JIANG Yong-zhi, BAI Xiao-li

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  540-549. 

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In order to explore the relationship between college students relying on the phone, real and Internet society support and alienation, the author used the charts of mobile addiction scale of college students, youth alienation scale, college students and teenagers Network Social Support Scale and Social Support Scale to measure 442 college students. The results showed that: (1) different mobile phone dependence levels are significantly different from alienation, and the higher the level is, the alienation is stronger; (2) mobile dependence has a significantly positive predicting effect on alienation, while online society support and the real society support on alienation is a significantly negative predictor; (3) the real society support has mediating and adjustable effects between mobile phone dependence and alienation, mobile phones rely on both the direct impact on the sense of alienation, but also by the real society support, and with the proportion of the total effect of the mediating effect being 17.8%; (4) both the real society support and Internet society have regulating effects on mobile phone dependence and alienation, which can cushion the impact of mobile phone dependence on alienation.

Affective Commitment and Job Burnout among Vocational and Technical Education Institutions’ Teachers：Mechanisms of Affective Commitment and Professional Title

KANG Yong-jun, WANG Xiao, QU Zheng-liang

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(5):  550-560. 

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The initial aim of this study is to explore the mediating role of affective commitment played in the relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and job burnout, and to examine the moderating role of professional title. By using cluster sampling method, a total of 1,237 professional teachers (full-time or part-time) worked in 36 vocational and technical education institutions from 14 provinces and cities in China were sampled. Hierarchical Regression Modeling (HRM) and Total Effect Moderation Model with bootstrap methods were adapted to test the hypotheses. The results showed in the study implicate that: (1) affective commitment mediates the relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and job burnout; (2) professional title has significant effect on the relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and job burnout, suggesting that the negative effect of psychological contract fulfillment on job burnout was stronger for low-professional title teachers; results of the integrative analysis of moderation and mediation show that the professional title have significant effect on the positive relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and affective commitment. However, the moderating effect was not significant in the second stage of the mediating process. The results thereof lead to the conclusion of this study that the affective commitment and job burnout has a negative correlation, regardless of their professional title.