Table of Content

15 October 2009, Volume 25 Issue 4

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The Development of Children’s Cognition and Psychological Experience of Life and Death

LI Dan, CHEN Xiu-di

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  1-7. 

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The current research was based on the background of life education.736 children,recurited from grade 2,4,6,8,11 in some elementary schools and high schools,were asked to complete their sentences by using "life" and "death".The results showed asfollow:(1)as the grade increased,children's knowledge about life and death was an indepth process gradually changing from vague cognition to image cognition,abstract cognition and reasonable cognition; (2)on the whole,children's psychological experience of life was positive,and with the age increased it became more mature and richer.Their psychological experience of death mainly consisted of sadness and fear.As the grade increased, more and more children began to philosophically experience the meaning and value of death,and a few children became confused of death.

Development of Young Children’s Antecedent Counterfactual Reasoning and Its Influencing Factors

WANG Jing, XIAO Xing-rong, CHEN Ying-he

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  8-14,36. 

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This study was conducted to explore the development of antecedent counterfactual reasoning of young children from 3 to 5 years of age and the influencing effect of outcome valence and domain knowledge.Verbal protocol and storytel ing were used to test 90 participants.The results showed as follows:(1)age had a significant effect on young children's antecedent counterfactual reasoning(2)young children generated more additive counterfactuals than subtractive counterfactuals,but no significant difference between upward and downward counterfactuals.(3)outcome valence had no direct effect but domain knowledge had a significant effect on young children.s antecedent counterfactual reasoning,and the interaction was also significant;however,the interaction disappeared when language was controlled.

The Development of 3-to 6-year-old Children’s Belief Reasoning

ZHANG Ting, LI Hong, ZEN Wei-xi, ZHANG Li, LIAO Yu

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  15-20. 

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To examine when children can understand true belief,and examine the developmental trajectory of understanding the rule of belief reasoning,true belief and false belief,diverse belief task,conflict true belief task and location false belief task were used.97 3-to 6-year-old children finished diverse belief task,conflict true belief task and location false belief task.3-year-old children passed the diverse belief task,5-year-old children passed the conflict true belief task,6-year-old children passed the location false belief task.Results support the developmental order that children understand true belief firstly,and then false belief.Moreover,the results declare that before children can understand belief,they have already known the rule of belief reasoning.

Representational Patterns of Numerical Estimation and its Development in Children

ZHOU Guang-dong, MO Lei, WEN Hong-bo

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  21-29. 

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Two experiments examined the development of children's numerical estimation and representations that gave rise to their estimates.In experiment 1,92 children from kindergarten,grade one and grade two were asked to estimate the locations of numbers on number lines with 0 at one end and 100 at the other and no markings in between.The result of experiment 1 indicated that most kindergarteners produced estimates consistent with a logarithmic function;most first and second graders produced estimates consistent with a linear function.In experiment 2,86 children from grade one, grade three and grade five were asked to estimate the locations of numbers on number lines with 0 at one end and 1000 at the other and no markings in between.There are 26 numbers selected in each experiment.The result of experiment-indicated that about half of first graders produced estimates that were best fit by linear function and half by logarithmic function,the large majority of third and fifth graders produced estimates consistent with a linear function.Both the results were against the view that people rely on any single representation of numbers,but for the Siegler's multiple-representations perspective.Compared with the children in the United States,the Chinese children showed the same development trend as the children in the United States,that is,with increasing age and numerical experience,they rely on appropriate representations increasingly often,but they showed better accuracy in numerical estimation task than their age peers in the United States.

A Longitudinal Study on the Developmental Trend of Aggression in Childhood

ZHAO Dong-mei, ZHOU Zong-kui, FAN Cui-ying, Ke Shan-yu

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  30-36. 

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Data on children's overt aggression and relational aggression of 285 students from Grade 3 and Grade 4 were collected in June of 2002,2003 and 2004.The Revised Class Play was employed to get overt aggression and relational aggression scores.Results indicated that(1)the changing trends of overt aggression and relational aggression were not significant from middle to late childhood;there was a significant positive correlation between overt aggression and relational aggression.And the more rapidly children's overt aggression changed,the faster their relational aggression did.(2)at T1,boys showed more overt aggression than girls,but the gender difference on the level of relational aggression was not significant.And the relational aggression of Grade 4 ascended at a faster speed during the three years than Grade 3.The group of higher relational aggression at T1,ascended at a faster speed during the three years than the group of lower relational aggression at T1.

Effects of Success or Failure on Pupils’ Self-worth in Games

MA Lai-xiang, KOU Yu

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  37-42. 

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142 children from third and fourth grade participated in the present study.Through a game of sandbag carry, we examined the effect of cooperation or competition and success or failure on the sense of self-worth.Results demonstrated that the sense of self-worth was affected by individual based but not group based success or failure,in which interpersonal relationship played as a partial mediator.When faced with individual based failure,participants with high sensitivity of their ability still showed high sense of self-worth.Cooperation or competition in the game did not reveal a significant effect on the sense of self-worth.

Relationship among Imaginary Audience,Personal Fable and Internet communication in Early Adolescents

GUO Fei, LEI Li

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  43-49,62. 

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The present study explored the relationships of imaginary audience,personal fable,preference of the Internet social service and pathological Internet use(PIU)by surveying a sample of 372 junior middle school students through questionnaires.Results indicated as follows:(1)both the preference of the Internet social service and the PIU among higher grade students were significantly higher than the lower grade ones;(2)the preference of the Internet social service had a direct effect on PIU;(3)the imaginary audience had a direct effect on PIU;(4)the imaginary audience and the invulnerability of personal fable had indirect effects on PIU through the preference of the Internet social service.

Informal Reasoning Differences between Excellent College Debaters and Non-debaters

ZHANG Qi, ZHANG Li, WANG Yi, ZHANG Yan-jun, MA Yan-ping, SUN Bao-hong

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  50-56. 

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This study was designed to investigate informal reasoning differences between college debaters and non-debaters.Two ill-structured problem tests were administered to the participants by argument prompting method.The results showed as follows:(1)most college students achieved refuting reasoning level.The majority of debaters were at the level of indirect refuting reasoning and the majority of non-debaters were at the level of direct refuting reasoning. During my-side and othe-rside reasoning,debaters generated significantly more functional and conditional reasons than non-debaters and there were significant differences in the span of reason field between the debaters and non-debaters; during refuting reasoning,debaters generated significantly more indirect refuting than the non-debaters,so the debaters informal reasoning ability were higher than the non-debaters;(2)The measuring system used in this study can differentiate debaters informal reasoning ability from the non-debaters,so it was an appropriate method to measure students informal reasoning.

A Comparative Study on the Creative Thinking Quality of the Elites and University Students in Social Sciences and Art

WANG Jing, JIN Sheng-hua

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  57-62. 

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The Creative thinking quality including depth,agility,flexibility and uniqueness was compared between elitists and university students in social sciences and art.The data was collected by the glossary association examination taken by 28 elitists and 30 university students in social sciences and art.The research found that elitists outperformed significantly the university students in both depth and uniqueness of creative thinking,but there was no significant difference between them in agility and flexibility of creative thinking.In conclusion,elitists go more deeply than university students in creative thinking.As a result,to improve the quality and the depth of students' creative thinking should be considered more.

Old Adults’ Eye Movements when Processing Disappearing Chinese Text

WU Jie, LIU Zhi-fang, HU Yan-wen

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  63-67. 

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The disappearing text paradigm was used to investigate how early in a fixation the old adults are able to obtain sufficient information from the text to read when disappearing unit is a word.Compared with the control condition,the differences were significant when words disappeared after 40 ms,60 ms,80 ms,100 ms or 120 ms in experiment.1.The words disappeared after 120 ms,140 ms,160 ms,180 ms or 200 ms under the experimental condition in experiment 2. There was no significant difference between the condition in which the words disappeared after 200 ms and the control condition.The conclusion was that for the aged,when they processed disappearing text most of the visual information necessary for reading could be acquired within the initial 200 ms during a fixation in Chinese reading.

An Event-related Potential Study on Neural Basis of Transitive Inference

ZHANG Feng-hua, QIU Jiang, YANG Qun, ZHANG Qing-lin

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  68-74. 

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The spatiotemporal analysis of brain activation in three transitive inference tasks and one baseline task(memory retrieval)was carried out by using high-density event-related brain potentials(ERPs).Results showed that the three inference tasks elicited the same activation which was different from that in the baseline task.This suggests that people process the transitive inference according to the visual representation of the information,and it supports mental model theory.

The Relationship among Emotion,Emotion Regulation Strategy and Memory of Emotionl materials

JIANG Yuan, SHEN De-li, BAI Xue-jun

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  75-80. 

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In this study,participants involve students from grade five at primary school and grade two at middle and high schools,while 288 subjects participate in our experiment.The present studies found recognition RT of the subjects who adopt cognitive reappraisal strategy are faster than expression suppression and control strategies in the word condition; while the recognition RT of those subjects who adopt cognitive reappraisal and control strategies in the figure condition are faster than those with expression suppression strategy.When the subjects adopt expression suppression strategy,there is no significant difference in recognition RT between word condition and figure condition;however,recognition RT of word condition is longer than the one of figure condition when the subjects adopt cognition reappraisal strategy.Recognition accuracy of figure is higher than one of word.The recognition RT of positive materials is fastest,and the next is one of the negative materials.Emotion interacts with emotionality of materials on recognition accuracy.The recognition accuracy of positive materials is significantly higher than both of negative and neutral materials when the subjects with positive emotion;recognition accuracy of negative materials is significantly higher than the ones of the positive and neutral materials when the subjects with negative emotion.

The Effects of Activation Level on Response Execution and Inhibition in Children of two ADHD Subtypes

JIN Ying, LIU Xiang-ping, ZHANG Wei, LAN Yan-ting

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  81-86. 

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A total of 48 primary school students(14 ADHD-C,16 ADHD-I and 18 mental normal children)were chosen. The study compared the different abilities of response execution and response inhibition between two ADHD subtypes children as well as compared these two subtypes with mentally normal children on different activation levels.The traditional goΠno2go task was administered at three levels of inter-stimulus interval of 1s,4s,and 8s.It was found as follow:(1)the ability of response execution of ADHD children was strongly dependent on the activation level,suggesting that they suffered from poor state regulation ability.The effects of activation level on response execution ability in two subtypes of ADHD were similar.The difference between ADHD and control children was smaller in the 1s condition than in the 4s and 8s conditions;(2)ADHD/C and ADHD/I had different models of deficits,ADHD/C suffered from state regulation disability and response inhibition deficit.Their response inhibition deficit was independent of activation level. ADHD/I only suffered from state regulation disability.

Infuences of Belief about Errors and Error Coping Approaches on Learning Performance in Middle School Students

LIU Ru-de, ZENG Mei-yan, SONG Ling-qing, GAO Bing-cheng

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  87-92. 

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This study investigated 819 students from the 1st and 2nd grade of middle schools with the questionnaire of belief about errors and error coping approaches to explore the influence of middle school students'belief about error and their error coping approaches on their learning performance.The results showed as follows:(1)middle school students' belief about error consists of three factors:error tolerance,error judgment,and error value recognition;(2)middle school students'error coping approach consists of three factors:error solving,error avoidance and negative emotion;(3) error value recognition's influence on learning performance is mediated by error solving approach and error avoidance approach.

A Longitudinal Study of the Relationship between Family Functioning and Adolescent Problematic Behaviors

HU Ning, DENG Lin-yuan, ZHANG Jin-tao, FANG Xiao-yi, CHEN Lei, MEI Hai-yan

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  93-100. 

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This longitudinal study investigated 620 subjects twice(9 months in between)from three middle schools in Beijing to explore the developments of adolescent family functioning and problematic behaviors,as long as the causal effect between family functioning and problematic behaviors.The results indicated as follows:(1)both family functioning and problematic behaviors of the subjects existed stability to some extent;however,some aspects in family functioning such as task accomplishments,communication and affective involvement got worse by time,and health endangered behaviors declined by time;(2)family functioning was significantly correlated to adolescent problematic behaviors,which meant that the better family functioning,the less problematic behaviors;(3)the cross-lagged regression analysis indicated that family functioning caused adolescent problematic behaviors,and affective involvement in family functioning significantly predicted adolescent problematic behaviors.

Characteristics of Substance use and its Core Contributing Factors among Reform School Students in Southwest of China

LIN Dan-hua, YANG A-li, WANG Fang, LI Xiao-ming, ZHANG Zhuo-shi

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  101-108. 

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A sample of 193 reform school students in southwest of China was recruited to complete a questionnaire to explore characteristics of substance use(smoking daily,binge drinking and drug use),its core contributing factors and their respective magnitude of effect.Results showed:(1)The population had a high level of substance use,with 49% reporting daily smoking,41% binge drinking and 41% using any kind of drug.Females were two times more likely to use drug than males(74% vs.35%);(2)Parental substance use and attitude,peers'substance use and attitude,peer pressure,resistance self-efficacy were the core contributing factors associated with substance use among reform school students;(3)Parental factors could significantly predict peer factors.Moreover,parental and peer factors could indirectly predict any kind of substance use through resistance self-efficacy among the population.The magnitude of parental factors'effect on students'resistance self-efficacy and substance use was higher than that of peer factors'effect.

Emotional Experience in College Students

DENG Li-fang, XU Tian-li, ZHENG Ri-chang

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  109-114. 

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The FACES Ⅱ-CV scale,Affect Scale and Emotional Expression Scale were employed to explore the relationships among family functioning,emotional expression and emotional experience in college students.A dataset with 851 college students was analyzed with the structural equation model,and the results indicated as follow:(1)family functioning was a significant predictor of emotional expression and emotional experience;(2)emotional expression was related to negative affect,emotional expression was connected with family functioning and emotional experience as a partial mediator.

Middle School Student’s Personal Epistemology:Theoretical Construct and Preliminary Development of Questionnaire

YANG Xiao-yang, SHEN Ji-liang

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  115-121. 

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Based on the well-structured Reflective Judgement Model(RJM),a theoretical framework about middle school students'personal epistemology was discussed firstly.Secondly,an instrument about middle school students' epistemological beliefs was develped upon the discussion.Then 459 middle school students at grade 7,8,10 completed the instrument.Results include:(1)good item differential validity,construct validity and internal consistency reliability were found;(2)A statistical model with five first rank dimensions and two second rank dimensions was chosen.Which include:certainty,complexity,source,justification of knowing,and multi-presentation were included at first rank, nature of knowledge and nature of knowing were included at second rank.

Exploring the College Students’ Core Competency Model Based on the Career Development

LOU Wei-yu, ZHONG Jian-an, DUAN Jin-yun

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(4):  122-127. 

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The study of College Students.Core Competency Model(CSCCM)based on the future career development is a preliminary exploration on the necessary competencies that a college student should develop.Grounded on literature analysis and interviews with 6 experts,the College Students.Core Competency(behavior)Dictionary was constructed.It included 21 core competencies,with their definitions and levels of behavioral indicators.After BEI and coding of two groups(outstanding graduates and ordinary graduates,10 for each group),the College Students.Core Competency Model (CSCCM)was developed.It consisted of 8 dimensions:down-to-earth,development by learning,responsibility,self-confidence,interpersonal relationship,oral expression,perseverance and need for achievement.