Table of Content

15 July 2009, Volume 25 Issue 3

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Difference of Cognitive Skills between Good and Poor Readers of Preschool and Primary School

LI Hong, SHU Hua

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  1-8. 

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Tasks tapping phonological awareness, morphological awareness, rapid automatized naming, visual skills, orthographic knowledge, and Chinese character recognition were administered to 193 kindergartners and 291 primary school students.Results underscore the importance of some dimensions of meta-linguistic awareness for both very early and intermediate Chinese reading acquisition.Only syllable deletion, and morphological construction, were unique correlates of Chinese character recognition in kindergartners.Among primary school children, the independent correlates of word recognition were rime detection, homophone judgment, and morpheme production.Speeded number-naming task was a good predictor for all children across grades.The orthographic awareness instead of visual skills played an important role in Chinese children's reading development when they entered primary school.

Development of Preschool Children’s Selective Trust Based on Judgments of Information——Its Continuity and Its Relationship with Interpersonal Trust

ZHANG Lan-ping, ZHOU Hui

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  9-14. 

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The current study examined whether preschool children could distinguish reliable/unreliable informants on the basis of the accuracy of their objects naming.Children joined in a game in which there were two informants.One of the informants labeled familiar things always rightly while the other always wrongly.After three trials of informants'objects labeling, children were asked to predict informants'following behavior according to their previous accuracy. Sixty children aged 2 to 4 participated the present study.Results indicated that:a)young children tended to trust accurate informant and formed selective trust since they were 3 year-old, and their selective trust became stable when they were 4 year 2old;b)Preschool children's selective trust tended to be stable across time and places;c)Selective trust based on judgments of accuracy of information could be transferred to interpersonal trust.

False belief understanding in 3～4-year-olds: The relative role of sentential complement syntax, semantic comprehension and working memory

MO Shu-liang, SU Yan-jie

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  15-19,25. 

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The relationship between language and theory of mind has been investigated for many years.The aim of the current study reported here was to identify relationship between sentential complement syntax comprehension and false belief understanding for 3～4 years old children in Mandarin.Forty-eight preschoolers(39～59 months)were administered with a serial of tests, which included false belief understanding tasks;a sentential complement test followed the procedures of de Villiers's study, Peabody Vocabulary-Picture Test(PPVT), and working memory test.Results showed that false belief understanding was significantly correlated with the scores of sentential complement syntax even controlled age. Regression analyses showed that the scores of complement syntax significantly predicted of the scores of false belief understanding, and sentential complement syntax could explain the role of semantic comprehension on false belief understanding.Our results provided further evidence for the argument that the important and unique role of the special syntax.

The Relationship among Social Creativity, Peer Relationship and Academic Achievement of Primary School Children

GU Chuan-hua, ZHOU Zong-kui, CHONG Ming-hui

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  20-25. 

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387 primary school children selected by cluster sampling were rated with questionnaire method, peer nomination and test score to explore the relationship among social creativity, academic achievement and peer relationship.The results indicated that, significant positive correlations were found between social creativity and academic achievement, social preference(SP), social impact(SI), and also between academic achievement and SP;meanwhile, SP fully mediated between social creativity and academic achievement, and academic achievement fully mediated between social creativity and academic achievement, and social creativity partially mediated between SP and academic achievement, and meanwhile SI moderated the effect of social creativity on academic achievement significantly.

The Developmental Trends of Chinese Children’s Oral English Output Forms

LI Yan-fang, GUAN Yi-jie, LOU Chun-fang, Dong Qi

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  26-31,38. 

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Four tasks(self-introduction, picture narrating, role play and asking questions)were used to identify developmental trends of Chinese children's oral English output forms.The children of second, fourth and sixth grade(N=82)from an ordinary primary school of Beijing were tested in the current study.The results indicated:(1)With the children going to higher grades, the amount of formulaic speech decreases while that of other ungrammatical speech increases.Right but not formulaic speech increases and remains stable in grade 4.(2)In grade 2, the formulaic speech is the main output form.In grade 4, the amount of both simplified speech and right but not formulaic speech increases. In grade 6, the amount of simplified speech increases, however, the formulaic speech still is the main output form.

The Characteristics of Students’ Peer Attachment and Its Relationship with Friendship Quality: Social Goals as a Mediator

LI Xiao-qing, ZOU Hong, LIU Yan, YANG Ying

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  32-38. 

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593 students participated in current study.Questionnaires were used to explore the characteristics of students' peer attachment, and its relationship with social goals and friendship quality.The results showed that:(1)the students' peer attachment could be categorized with 4 styles, including secure, preoccupied, dismissing and fearful, whose proportion were 34.5%, 23.8%, 22.1% and 19.6%, respectively.(2)there were significant differences between grades and sex in peer attachment.That is, attachment anxiety of Grade 8 was significantly higher than Grade 10.And attachment avoidance of Grade 7 was higher than Grade 8, Grade 10 and Grade 11.Boys'attachment anxiety was significantly lower than girls', but their attachment avoidance was higher than girls'.(3)the 4 styles differed significantly in social goals and friendship quality.(4)the help and support, intimacy of social goals served as a partial mediator in the relationship between peer attachment and friendship quality.

Study on real-life moral dilemmas among university students:Everyday morality perspective

LI Yin, XU Wen-yan

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  39-45. 

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Taking everyday morality perspective, the present study dedicates itself to investigate the real-life moral dilemmas university students personally have experienced in their everyday lives.45 undergraduate students and postgraduate students participated in this study.The foci in this study were on what issues people perceived their real-life moral dilemmas as involving as well as how they resolved the conflicts inherent in these issues.The findings indicated that(1)most of real-life moral dilemmas were different from the hypothetical dilemmas involving conflicts between moral norms.Moral content lied mainly in the issues people addressed.Individuals differed in both how many issues and what issues they read into or saw in different types of real-life moral dilemmas.(2)the appropriate strategies people advocated for handling moral problems wore somewhat different from those they applied in their real-life moral dilemmas.In particular, there wore more self-serving and pragmatic concerns in real-life moral decision.In addition, people relied on consideration of consequences especially harm when evaluating moral actions.

The Study of the Representation of Thinking in Problem-Finding Process of the Undergraduates

CHEN Li-jun, ZHENG Xue

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  46-53. 

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The representational level in the process of problem finding were investigated in contradictory and potential situations by means of thinking aloud.40 undergraduates attended the experiment.Half of them were high-score students and the rest were low-score students.The results showed, (1)high-score students found problems and key problems more than low-score students.Problems in contradictory situatoin were more than problems in potential situation.(2)High quality problems were based on the adequate representations.The contact representations were good to prblem finding, but the objective representation was bad to problem finding.It need more representations of information in mind in potential situation than in contradictory situatoin.(3)The order of representations were different.High2score students and low-score students followed the same order.

A Study on Predictors of the Relationship Between Implicit Dispositional Moral Sensitivity and Explicit Dispositional Moral Sensitivity

ZHENG Xin-jun, CEN Guo-zhen

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  54-60. 

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The relationship and the predictors of implicit dispositional moral sensitivity(DMS)and explicit DMS were examined in 228 college students.Implicit Association Test(IAT), Dispositional Moral Sensitivity Questionnaires (DMSQ)and other related scales were adopted.The results showed:Male subjects' implicit dispositional moral sensitivity effects were significantly higher than those of female ones.In explicit dispositional moral sensitivity, female subjects' guilt of empathy, intrusiveness of empathy were significantly higher than those of male ones, and their punitivity were significantly lower than those of male ones.There was not a significant correlation between the implicit and explicit DMS of the surveyed subjects.Both self-monitor and moral at itude strength could predict the disparities between college students' implicit and explicit DMS, and with self-monitor having a relatively higher predictability.

The effect of mental loading on accuracy and bias of meta-memory monitoring

LI Jian, YUAN Wen-dong, LUO Fang, DU Wei

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  61-67. 

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The present study was intended to investigate the effect of mental loading on meta-memory monitoring.A Chinese character recalling task was administered to 41 graduate students in order to assess their prospective monitoring and retrospective monitoring.J udgment of learning(JOL)and judgment of confidence(JOC)were performed before or after the cognitive task.All responses were automatically recorded by the computer, while absolute accuracy, relative accuracy and monitoring bias were calculated as indexes.The SPSS 13.0 software was used for data analysis.The results showed:(1)When using gamma as the index of relative monitoring accuracy, the main effect of mental loading was significant in JOL.The accuracy declined with the increase of mental loading.(2)While using difference score as the index, absolute monitoring accuracy declined with the increase of mental loading both in JOL and JOC, but the main effect was stronger in JOL.(3)The monitoring bias changed from "No bias" to "Over confidence", then to "No bias", and finally to "Under confidence", as the mental loading was increasing gradually.

The Negative Priming Effect and the Conditions under Which It Is Elicited in the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task

JIANG Qiu-rong, LI Hong

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  68-76. 

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In order to study the role of negative priming in the flexible rule use of children, three experiments were used to examine the negative priming effect and its development in 3-4 years old children.Experiment 1 clarif ied that most 3 and 4 years old children had surprising difficulties in passing the standard negative priming version of DCCS and their performance followed the same developmental trend as in the standard version..Experiment 2 explored the conditions under which NP was elicited in the DCCS.It indicated that where there was a conflict in the pre-switch phrase, there was NP.No matter they were conflicting rules or conflicting values.We thought selective at ention together with active inhibition which were both elicited by conflict were critical to NP.The last experiment examined what children inhibited when they act ively inhibited in the NP version of DCCS.It showed that children actually inhibited the irrelevant dimension which was an upper level instead of one or several specific values.In all, we thought negative priming may also be a problem for children to overcome in the development of cognitive flexibility.

A Research on the Application of D-N: Cognitive Assessment System In the Cognitive Evaluation of the AD/HD Children

DENG Ci-ping, FU Li-ping, LI Qi-wei, Jagannath P. Das

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  77-82. 

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In the study, two groups of children were recruited as Participants.The clinical group consisted of 18 children with ADPHD from Shanghai Mental Health Center, and the other group included 18 normal children selected from a primary school, who matched those children with ADPHD one-by-one by age, gender, and score on Raven.s Progressive Matrices.Two groups of children's scores on Das-Naglieri:Cognitive Assessment System(CAS), developed on the PASS model, were collected and analyzed.The results showed that two groups of children scored dif erently on Attention Scale and Planning Scale of CAS, and children with ADPHD got lower scores at these two scales than that of normal children. However, two groups of children showed no difference in their performance in Simultaneous Processing Scale and Successive Processing Scale.A further analysis also showed that ADPHD children's scores on the Attention Scale and Planning Scale predicted well their performance of inattention assessed according to DSM-IV criteria.Thus, the findings suggested that, if used properly, CAS would be helpful for assessing and diagnosing ADPHD children.

Researches into Conditions for Key-letters Method Effect in Memorizing English Vocabulary

LI Tsing-an, WANG Yan-hua, HUANG Kui, LIU Xin-hong, GUO Jing

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  83-88. 

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By means of interventional paradigm and method of medium stimulation, 112 seventh grade students were randomly selected as participants, a series of self-constructed materials and instruments were employed to investigate three conditions for key-letters method effect in memorizing English vocabulary:recognizing key-letters, retrieving isomer word for key-letters, and retrieving definition of isomer word.The results were as follows:(1)when requested to give exact recalls, for both short-term and long-term memory, recognizing key-letters and retrieving isomer word for it were necessary conditions for key-letters method effect, and retrieving definition of isomer word was a sufficient condition for the effect;(2)when requested to give rough recalls, for long-term memory, recognizing key-letters was a necessary condition for the effect;retrieving isomer word for it was a potentially sufficient condition for the effect, and retrieving definition of isomer word sufficient condition for the effect.

The Relationship among Emotion Work Strategies, Characters and Job Satisfaction in Primary and Middle School Teachers

YANG Ling, LI Ming-jun

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  89-94,100. 

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Based on resource conservation theory, the study explored the relationship among emotional work strategies, characters and job satisfaction by a questionnaire survey in 368 primary and middle school teachers.The results showed that:①Surface acting strategy was significantly and negatively related to job satisfaction.While, active deep acting strategy and passive deep acting strategy were significantly and positively correlated with job satisfaction.②duration of interaction, variety of emotions were negatively related to job satisfaction, active deep strategy and positive deep strategy were positively correlated with surface acting strategy;③surface acting strategy play part mediating effect between variety of emotions and job satisfaction, Positive deep acting strategy significantly mediated the relationship between variety of emotions and job satisfaction.

Researches into the Relationships among Adult Attachment, Social Support and Depression in College Students

TANG Fu-rong, ZHANG Da-jun, LIU Yan-ling

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  95-100. 

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To analyze the relationships between adult attachment, social support and depression, 438 college students were choosed at random to complete the RQ, ECR, SSRS, and BDI.The results were as follows:(1)Avoidant attachment, anxious attachment, social support and depression had remarkable differences on attachment styles.(2)There were strong negative relations between Avoidant attachment and social support, between anxious attachment and social support, between social support and depression;Depression was positively related to both Avoidant attachment and anxious attachment;(3)Social support partially mediated the relationship between Avoidant attachment, anxious attachment and depression.

The Effect of University Students’ Core Self-evaluation and Academic Burnout on Their Academic Tiresome

MA Li-jun, LI Jian-bin

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  101-106. 

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Questionnaire was adopted to investigate the effect of university students' core self-evaluation(CSE)and academic burnout on their academic tiresome.362 university students were employed as subjects.Results showed that: (1)some dimensions of CSE and academic burnout correlated with academic tiresome;(2)SEM results indicated that: (a.)CSE produced both direct and indirect effects on emotional and behavioral academic tiresome;(b.)Emotion and behavior separated from each other in academic tiresome;(c.)CSE produced as much direct effect as indirect effect on emotional academic tiresome;CSE produced more direct effect than indirect effect on behavioral academic tiresome;(d.)Academic burnout served as an intermediary between CSE, emotional academic tiresome and behavioral academic tiresome.

Literature Review on Related Factors of Natural Disasters

ZANG Wei-wei, FU Fang, WU Xin-chun, LIN Chong-de

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  107-112,128. 

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It's common that people have stress reaction after they experienced natural disaster.As time goes by, these reactions may disappear, or transform to posttraumatic growth, or deteriorate into PTSD and other psychological distresses.The process is affected by three kinds of factors:(1)pre-disaster factors, such as gender, age;(2)within-disaster factors, such as traumatic exposure;(3)post-disaster factors, such as social support, resilience.Based on the epidemiological risk-protective approach and proactive agentic model, the paper discusses the mechanism of the risk factors and protective factors in the post-disaster factors.Previous research is integrated and the implications for the future intervention and the prospect of the future research are analyzed.

Development of Diagnostic Math Test for Grader 4 and Grader 5 based on the Rule Space Model

LI Feng, YU Na, XIN Tao

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  113-118. 

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Based on the rule space model.Diagnostic math test and compiled the diagnostic test for grader 4 and grader 5 was developed.The results revealed that the test not only had good reliability and validity but also provided abundant diagnostic information.According to the diagnostic results from the test which was administered to 1159 students, the grader 4 and grader 5 performed well on whole number, elementary operation and application;however, the attributes such as measure, statistics, searching for pattern and advanced operation were not well mastered.What is more, those not-well-mastered at ributes indicated the fastest growth between grade 4 and grade 5.

Detection of Differential Item Functioning Using the Mean and Covariance Structure Analysis Model

ZHAO Bi-hua, GU Hai-gen

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  119-122. 

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The article clarifies the principle and procedure of detection of uniform and non-uniform differential item functioning(DIF)on polytomous ordered response item using multiple-group mean and covariance structure analysis (MACS)model, gives a demonstration that how the procedure is applied to moral self-concept scale for detection of DIF, and evaluates the method.Compared with item response theory, MACS concerns the systematic and iterative use of modification indices to detect DIF and gives multiple fit indices to assess model fit jointly.And compared with the standard confirmatory factor analysis, MACS allows the detection of not only non-uniform DIF but also uniform DIF.It is recommendable to detect DIF using MACS.

The Multiple Connotation and Structure of Responsibility and the Relevant Theoretical Integration

LI Ming, YE Hao-sheng

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(3):  123-128. 

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Studies on responsibility or conscientiousness have similar objects, close connotations and different conceptualizations.The uniqeness of each of their study methods and measurements has brough us various results.This article firstly reviewed the explorations on the connotation and structure of responsibility and conscientiousness so as to catch the connection among the research fields of responsibility and conscientiousness.Secondly, we analysed the theories from different fields such as moral study and cognitive proach relevant to responsibility and conscientiousness.And finally we made a further step on a more comprehensive model named three-facet model of responsibility.The potential characteristics of the model were also discussed.