Table of Content

15 November 2014, Volume 30 Issue 6

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The Effects of Prosocial Video Games on Players' Humanization

CHEN Chao-yang, MA Bing-bing, MA Ting, ZHANG Feng

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  561-569. 

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Video games are so widely popular that have attracted lots of researchers' attention for a long time. Video games have great impacts on players of all ages. According to the General Learning Model(GLM),the effects of video games depend on the content of the game. The violent video games can stimulate players' aggressive cognition,offensive emotion and behavior,while the prosocial video games can improve the player' prosocial cognition,emotion and behavior. Previous studies mainly inspected the effects of video games on players' prosocial or antisocial knowledge,empathy,and aggressive behavioral tendencies. In recent two years,the researchers also found that video games could affect the players' humanization. But they all employed subjective reports which have always been questioned for their validity. Meanwhile no researchers have studied that the effects prosocial video games played on players' humanization. So in present study,we inspected the impact of prosocial video games had on players' humanization to themselves and to others through two experiments in explicit and implicit levels respectively in order to get a comprehensive understanding. The main results were as follows:In explicit level,compared to neutral game,in the dimension of Human Nature and Human Uniqueness,prosocial video games could significantly improve the players' perceived humanity to themselves and to others. In implicit level,compared to neutral game,in the dimension of Human Uniqueness,playing prosocial video games could not only significantly improve the degree of self-perception bias,but also improve the degree of others perception bias; However in the dimension of Human Nature,playing prosocial video games could only significantly improve the degree of payers' self-perception bias but had no effect on others-perception bias. These results suggest prosocial video games have important effects on players' Humanization to themselves and to others.

4- to 7-Year-olds' Trust Judgment Based on Trustee's Trustworthiness Traits and Scenarios

ZHOU Hai-li, ZHOU Hui

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  570-576. 

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The study was aimed to investigate children's ability to make trust judgment based on two different trustworthiness traits (benevolence and competence) and trust-related scenarios. 120 children aged 4 to 7 were included and the adapted dual choice paradigm was used in the study. The results showed that:(1) In the scenario related to benevolence, the judgment accuracy of 4 to 7 year-old children was significantly higher than the random level. However, in the scenario related to competence, only 6-year-old and 7-year-old children's judgment accuracy was significantly higher than the random level; (2) Based on their understanding of trustworthiness traits and trust-related scenarios, 6-year-old children already had the ability to make the right judgment of trust. Even so, these children made better judgments in the scenario related to benevolence rather than in the scenario related to competence. However, 7-year-old children did not show significant difference in both scenarios; (3) When taking both the trustworthiness traits and scenarios into consideration, 5 to 7 year-old children's judgment accuracy was significantly higher than the random level. Moreover, when comparing the judgment accuracy of children of different ages, both 6-year-old children and 7-year-old children did significantly better than 5-year-old children. These results suggest that when children up to 5 years old, they begin to develop the ability of considering both the trustworthiness traits and scenarios when making trust judgment. Furthermore, this kind of ability become mature and stable when children up to 7 years old.

The Role of Child Affectivity on Parenting Style at Toddlerhood

ZHU Ying, LIU Ya-peng, ZHANG Guang-zhen, ZHANG Yin-ping, LIANG Zong-bao, YE Ming, DENG Hui-hua

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  577-584. 

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Using a longitudinal design and hierarchical regression analysis, the present study aimed to investigate how early child emotionality (distress to limitations, fear, smiling and laughter) influenced parental parenting styles at the child age of 24 months and meanwhile to examine whether the influences would vary with child age. Participants in the present study consisted of a total of 281 children and their parents. The results showed that children's distress to limitations both at child age of 6 and 14 months could positively predict maternal harsh parenting style at toddlerhood, and fear at 14 months old could positively predict maternal concern/ protection, and smiling and laughter could positively predict maternal acceptance and negatively maternal harsh and concern/protection. Distress to limitations of children aged 6 months could positively predict paternal harsh and concern/ protection at toddlerhood and of children aged 14 months could still positively predict paternal harsh parenting.

Family Environment and High School Students' Development:Mediating Effect of Autonomy and its Gender Difference

WANG Fan, FANG Xiao-yi, HU Wei, CHEN Hai-de, WU Meng-xi, TANG Qin

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  585-593. 

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348 high school students from three high schools in Zhejiang province were selected to fulfill the questionnaire online in group. Results were used to explore the effects and mechanism of family environment on high school students' development as well as the mediating effect of autonomy and its gender difference. Based on describing test,correlation analysis and structure equation models,results revealed as follow:(1) emotional autonomy of male students was significantly higher than that of female students,while perceived family intimacy was the opposite; (2) both family environment and autonomy were positively related to high school students' positive development,negatively related to negative development; high school students' positive development were negatively related to negative development; (3) family environment positively predicted high school students' positive development,negatively predicted negative development,and the former predictive effect was significantly higher than the latter one;(4) autonomy partially mediated the relationship between family environment and high school students' development; the mediating effect of autonomy between family environment and positive development were significant in both male and female group; as to negative development,the mediating effect is significant in male group while not sighificant in female group. The results provided initial statistics for promoting positive development of high school students as well as reducing the possibilities of negative development from family perspective.

The Mediating Effects of Subjective Social Status on the Relations between Self-Esteem and Socioeconomic Status for College Students

CHEN Yan-hong, CHENG Gang, GUAN Yu-sheng, ZHANG Da-jun

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  594-600. 

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This study intends to investigate the mediating effects of subjective socialstatus on the relations between self-esteem and socioeconomic status for college students. The questionnaire of college students' subjective social status, the questionnaire of socioeconomic and Rosenberg self-esteem scale have been applied and 1066 questionnaires have been acquired. The results indicate that:Use of subjective social status and socioeconomic status was positively correlated with self-esteem; Subjective social status could mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status and self-esteem(the mediating effect was 0.34).

The Relationship between Early Parenting Behavior and The Belief of Filial Piety among Young Adults

LI Xiao-tong, WANG Xue-ling, WANG Da-hua, YAN Lei

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  601-608. 

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To investigate persistence of traditional belief of filial piety among Chinese adult children, and its relationship with the early parenting behaviors, two questionnaires(The scale of Filial Piety Belief, short-form of Egna Minnen av Bardoms Uppfostran ) were administered to 479 participants (215 only-Children)with age ranging from 18 to 40 years old (26.15±5.32). The findings suggested that:(1) Traditional belief of filial piety among adult offspring was undergoing weakening; (2) There were no significant differences between the only-children's and the non-only children's beliefs of traditional filial piety, but the family structure influences the relationship between parenting behavior and adult children's traditional belief of filial piety; (3) The gender difference was significant on the concept of filial piety, females have stronger beliefs on “reverencing and pleasing” and “ancestral worshiping and supporting” than males; (4) The young children's traditional beliefs of filial piety were significantly affected by their parents' rearing behaviors. To be exact, children's beliefs of filial piety were strengthened by the maternal emotional warmth, the beliefs on “oppressing themselves and showing obedience to parents” were weakened by the maternal rejection, but were strengthened by the paternal emotional warmth and overprotectiveness.

Cue Strength Regulating the Testing Effect:The Differences between Different Testing Intervals

ZHENG Jun, ZHANG Wei, LUO Liang

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  609-615. 

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The testing effect refers to the fact that in comparsion to restudy, involvment in the testing enhances long-term retention. The current study had 126 subjects, and adopted Chinese words pairs with different cue strength (strong/weak) as experimental materials. The experiment was designed to explore how learning methods (restudy/testing) influencing the memory retention on different testing intervals (5 minutes/2 days). The results indicated that:(1) memory of target words with strong cues showed the main effect of learning methods:the target performance in testing group was higher than restudy group. (2) In the situation of weak cues, the main effect of learning methods wasn't significant, but there was an interaction between learning methods and testing intervals:there was no significant difference between the immediate recall of restudy and testing group, however, the performance of testing group was significant higher than restudy group two days later. In conclusion, these results demonstrated that cue strength regulating the testing effect, which supports the elaborative retrieval hypothesis

The Role of Orthography in Oral Vocabulary Learning of Chinese Children

CHEN Yu, LI Hong, ZHANG Jie, RUAN Xiao-tong, RAO Xia-wei, WU Xin-chun

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  616-623. 

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Learning new oral vocabulary involves a process of making links between a word's pronunciation (phonology) and its meaning (semantics). Research on alphabetic languages showed orthographic facilitation in children's vocabulary learning depending on their knowledge of grapheme-phoneme connections. However, no research has been conducted to investigate whether similar results might be observed in Chinese vocabulary learning and it is not intuitively obvious because Chinese correspondences between orthography and phonology are less transparent. Two experiments were conducted in the present study to address how orthography-phonology congruence and transparency of meaning influence Chinese vocabulary learning.
In Experiment 1, 40 second graders were taught to associate 12 spoken monosyllable labels with novel-object pictures over four learning trials. Children learned 4 of the monosyllable-picture pairs with regular opaque pseudo-characters which provided congruent phonetic information but no semantic information of the character, 4 monosyllables with irregular opaque pseudo-characters, and 4 monosyllables without any orthography. Three orthographic types were counterbalanced across monosyllables and pictures to form three sets. Children were randomly assigned to one of the three sets. The results showed poorer recall with incongruent characters than with no orthography or with congruent characters. In Experiment 2, 27 first graders were taught another 12 picture-monosyllable associations with regular pseudo-characters or irregular pseudo-characters or no orthography. Transparency of character is also manipulated. Half of items under each condition are transparent characters which provided useful semantic information of the whole character and the other half are opaque characters which provided misleading cues to the character's meaning. Results duplicated the orthographic interference of irregular condition in Experiment 1. Furthermore, the effect of transparency was indicated by better recall with transparent characters than with opaque characters.
These results revealed the role of Chinese orthography in oral vocabulary learning. Exposure to irregular orthography hindered memory of words. But transparent characters boosted children's memory of pronunciation-meaning associations. The current study extends orthography effect from alphabetic languages to Chinese, a non-alphabetic language where phonology is not readily inferred from orthography. The orthographic effect should be given full consideration in future Chinese vocabulary teaching.

The Associations between Mother-child Relationship, Teacher-child Relationship and Social Adaptive Behaviors for Preschool Migrant Children

LI Yan-fang, XU Liang-yuan, LV Ying, LIU Li-jun, WANG Yun

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  624-634. 

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Mother-child relationship and teacher-child relationship play key roles in children's early social adaptation. Based on the data of 271 rural migrant children and 552 urban children in Beijing, the present study investigated the associations between mother-child relationship, teacher-child relationship and preschool migrant children's social adaptive behaviors (including social competence, externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors). The results showed that:(1) Compared to the urban children, migrant children experienced lower level of mother-child closeness, while the two groups had no difference in mother-child conflict, teacher-child closeness and conflict. (2) The association between mother-child relationship and social adaptive behaviors showed no difference between migrant children and urban children. Mother-child closeness and conflict significantly predicted children's social competence and problem behaviors; teacher-child closeness was a significant predictor for urban and migrant children's social competence, also for migrant children's internalizing problem behaviors. (3) Teacher-child relationship showed moderating role in the associations between mother-child relationship and social adaptive behaviors especially for migrant children. Lower teacher-child conflict buffered the negative effects of mother-child conflict on migrant children's social competence; higher teacher-child closeness attenuated the negative effects of mother-child conflict on migrant children's internalizing problem behaviors.

How Paternal and Maternal Psychological Control Affect on Internalizing and Externalizing Problems of Children with ODD Symptoms

LIN Xiu-yun, LI Long-feng, LI Yan-bin, WANG Zhong-hui, CHEN Qi, FANG Xiao-yi

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  635-645. 

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The current study aimed to explore the characteristics of internalizing (depression) and externalizing (aggressive behavior) problem of children with ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) symptoms, and investigate how paternal and maternal psychological control affected on internalizing and externalizing problems of these children. Furthermore, the study also explored if the self-esteem would play a mediator role and children's gender would play a moderate role in the relationship between parental psychological control and children's problems. Particularly, this study approached if there would be difference between paternal and maternal psychological control and between effect of parental psychological control on children's internalizing and externalizing problems. Totally, 340 children with ODD symptoms and their 158 class helpers from 14 elementary schools in Beijing, Shandong and Yunnan attended the study and completed the questionnaire. Children themselves completed scales of Parental Psychological Control, Children's Self-esteem and Depression; and their class helpers completed the Children's Aggression in School. During selection the children, first, the class helpers nominated the children who may have ODD symptoms from 7966 primary students using ODD symptoms assessment (from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-IV). Second, 2 clinical psychologists and the school mental health educator assured the assessment with the class helpers and decided the eligible participants. Descriptive analysis, ANOVA, Person correlation analysis and regression analysis were used to analysis data.Data analysis revealed that:(1) Compared to girls, more boys had symptoms of ODD, as well as more serious emotional and behavioral problems, and lower self-esteem; (2) Boys perceived significant much more paternal psychological control than girls, but not in maternal psychological control; (3) Both paternal and maternal psychological control was positively correlated with children's depression and aggressive behavior. Higher paternal psychological control was associated with increased depression and aggressive behavior, and higher maternal psychological was associated with only increase aggressive behavior;(4) Self-esteem played mediated role both in the relationship between paternal psychological control and children's problems and maternal psychological control and children's problems.

The Social Adjustment of Left-behind Children in Rural China:A Propensity Score Analysis

HOU Ke, LIU Yan, QU Zhi-yong, JIANG Suo

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  646-655. 

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Using survey data of 3812 rural children in grades 4 to 9 in Henan and Shanxi Provinces, this article examines depression, self-esteem, subjective well-being, behavioral problems, future-related stress and interpersonal relationships among children left behind by their rural-to-urban migrant parents compared to those living in non-migrant families. After using propensity score matching techniques to control for selection effects, we find significant negative effects of both parents migrating on their children's subjective well-being. Also we find left-behind children with one parent migrating experienced greater future-related stress than non-left-behind children.

The Research and Application of Neurolaw Evidence about Teenage Cime

LIU Zhao-min, ZHANG Qiong-lin

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  656-663. 

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With continuous extension of neuroscience research,a new interdisciplinary,neurolaw (also named neuroscience and the law),emerges. The relationship between brain development and the criminal responsibility of adolescents is one focused theme. Related research indicated that the intensified risk-taking tendencies in mid-teens may be rooted in an imbalance between the maturation process of control and reward brain circuitry. That is,the mature trajectory of subcortical sensation seeking system is different from that of the top-down prefrontal control system. Reward related regions appear to show a curvilinear development pattern(inverted U-shape pattern),with an increase during adolescence relative to childhood and adulthood. In contrast to subcortical social-affective system,the control-related regions follow a linear development pattern until earlier adult. The scientific evidence about adolescent brain development has reached and influenced the decisions of US Supreme Court about criminal culpability of juveniles,but there is still some people object to admit its reliability,and argue that current research cannot contribute usefully to legal decisions about individual adolescent and should not be used in criminal trials at the present time. To meet the standards for its admissibility in legal system,neurolawyers should strengthen efforts in research and practice at the same time.

Embodied Morality:A New Approach in Moral Psychology

CHEN Xiao, JIANG Qi, HOU Min, ZHU Meng-yin

Psychological Development and Education. 2014, 30(6):  664-672. 

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The embodied morality is that the physical and its activities have an interactive impact with moral psychology and behavior. The research paradigms of embodied morality are including moral Stroop, implicit association test, the paradigm of situation change, and the paradigm of mood change. Embodied morality combines the effects of body anatomy, perception experience and the interaction of body and environment with moral psychology and behavior. In the relationships with perception experience and moral psychology, it includes the relationship between physical disgust and moral, self-cleanness and moral purity metaphor, moral-lightness metaphor, moral-color metaphor, the spatial dimension of moral and the time dimension of moral. Future research should enrich and improve the research contents, study the metaphorical cultural differences and consistency effect, use of various methods and techniques and so on.