Table of Content

15 January 2009, Volume 25 Issue 1

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A Study of Young Children’s Spatial Location Coding Ability in A Rotation Task

WANG Quan-quan, HU Qing-fen

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  1-6. 

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The importance of spatial learning is not dispute to psychologists.Since Piaget indicate this,many developmental psychologists have studied the spatial ability in children,espatialy the spatial location coding ability. There are two possible ways to code spatial location:egocentric representation and alocentric representation.In Piaget's opinion,the allocentric representation coding didn't emerge until 8 years old.But many Psychologists after Piaget have different opinions on the emergency and development of these two codings.However,we lived in a real world,much of what we interact with in the world is in motion,So we have the need to know the roles and developments of the two spatial location coding when we face to moving objects. This study investigated how young children use spatial location coding in a moving situation.52 children aged from 3 to 5 participated in this study.We used a rotative set to present the problem and let the children make answers.The results were as follows:(1)Children used egocentric representation better than allocentric representation,this method effect was significant;(2)Children aged 5 did better than 3 and 4 2age children in egocentric representation,the age effects were significant;(3)Children aged 5 can use allocentric representation after we show some clues,but the 3 and 4 years old children still failed.

Study on the Impact of Teachers’ Attitudes and Ways of Guidance on Pre-School Children’s Persistence

DAN Fei, FENG Lu

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  7-13. 

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This study explores the impact of teachers'attitude and verbal guidance on the persistence of 3～6 years old children,employing a total random experimental design of 3×2×2(age×teachers'attitude×ways of verbal guidance).In this experiment,age,teachers'attitude and ways of verval guidance are all independent variables,and the time of children's persistence on the targeted tasks are the dependent variable.Four experimental cases are designed and implemented in the two randomly selected kindergardens in Shenyang City.The sujectes between 3 to 6 years old are selected in different levels of the yongest,medium and oldest classes and altogether 360 children are involved in the experiment with half females and half males.Thus,each experimental case has 30 subjects covering all the ages and with females and males half by half.The result shows that:(1)the persistence of children between 3 and 6 years old gradually develops with each year and the years between 4 and 5 are the key transformational period;(2)the attitude of different teachers has a significant impact on children's persistence;(3)different ways of verbal guidance have a significant influence on children's persistence;(4)with teachers'positive attitude,multiple times of verbal guidance have the most positive influence on children's persistence.

Faux-pas understanding among 7 to 11 years old and its correlation with maternal rearing style

DU Dan, SU Yan-jie

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  14-20. 

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This study aimed to investigate the development of school-age children's theory of mind ability and its possible relation with maternal rearing style.Two faux-pas stories and EMBU revised questionnaire were used to test 150 primary school students aged from 7 to 11 and their mothers.The focus was children's recognition of faux pas,emotional understanding,belief(including intention)understanding and the influence of maternal rearing style.The results showed that children's multiple levels of theory of mind ability were still developing even at school age.For higher graders it was multi-dimensional.Mother's score on "deny and rejection" for 9 year-olds was significantly higher than the one for 7 year-olds.For 7 year-olds children,the score of "belief with intention understanding question" was negatively related to mother's score on "over protected".For 8 year-2olds children,the score of "belief together with intention understanding question" was negatively related to mother's score on "punishment and severity".In some developmental ages,children's theory of mind ability might be related to specific maternal rearing style.

The Effects of Mood State on Set Shifting of Children

ZHAO Li, WANG Yong-hui, WANG Zhen-hong, YOU Xu-qun, YUE Cai-qun

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  21-26. 

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Using the emotional films to induce the mood state,this study investigated set shifting ability of 64 children from age 8 to 12 years old at the state of positive or negative emotion.The experiment was a 4(age:8;9;10;12)×2 (emotion:positive;negative)×3(repeat;two shift conditions)mixed design.The results showed that the mood state had significant effect on set shifting,the positive mood state may impair performance on switching condition,especially when switching to a new task set after repeating more items in the same set comparing with switching after repeating less items in the same set.None of the significant differences were observed among children of four age groups in both of the switching conditions,suggesting that children of age from 8 to 12 years all have the capacity to switch on-line between two task sets.

The Impact of Cooperation Index and the Description of Payoff Matrix on Cooperation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma of Children

SUN Xin-yi, CHEN jing, LI Hong, LI Xiu-li

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  27-33. 

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Using the Prisoner's Dilemma task to research the impact of cooperation Index and the description of matrix on coopertation of the Prisoner's Dilemma.Subjects were 91 children and 101 adults.The results show that:(1)there are more cooperation in the conditon of "avoidance" description than in "approach" type,and no impact of the description type of matrix on adult.(2)Children were not sensitive with the index of cooperation,and the average cooperation ratio was significantly higher than adults',and showed cooperation tendency.The average cooperation ratio of adult increased with the cooperation of the index increased,but always below 0.5,and showed competition tendency.

Measuring Students’ Representation Level on Arithmetic Word Problems:Based on the Relational-Representational Complexity Model

XIN Zi-qiang, ZHANG Li

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  34-40,53. 

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Students often have difficulty in solving arithmetic word problems.According to the relational-representational complexity model developed by Xin Ziqiang(2003-2008),the difficulty of an arithmetic word problem is determined partly by the relational complexity of variables in the problem.Based on the model,in the present study,a test consisting of 24 arithmetic word problems with different levels of relational complexity was designed for measuring children.The test was administrated to 165 students from grade 4,5,6 and 7.Results showed that:(1)prior analyzed problems'relational complexity(involving analysis of relational complexity of variables in every item)could predict most variance of task difficulty(73.7% of error percentage,78.7% of a difficulty index of Rasch model),and the criterion validity with the SOLO taxonomy test was 0.65;(2)students'representation levels on the test improved with grades. Such results indicted that the test is an effective and reliable instrument for measuring children's representation levels changing with grades.

Age Differences of Middle School Students’ Narcissism and Its Relationship with Social Adjustment:Self-esteem as a Mediator

ZHOU Hui, ZHANG Bao, ZHENG Shan-shan

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  41-45. 

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To explore the age differences of middle school students.narcissism and its relationship with social adjustment, 459 students from Grade 1 junior school to Grade 2 senior school finished questionnaires on narcissism,self-esteem and social adjustment.Result indicated:a)there were grade differences on students.narcissism;Students in Grade 3 junior school had lower narcissistic level than that in Grade 1 senior school;Since the effect size of grade difference was small, it should be cautious when explaining this result;b)narcissism was positively related to social adjustment;c)self-esteem mediuted the relationship between narcissism and social adjustment.

The Influence of Test Anxiety on False Memory

CHEN Shun-sen, TANG Dan-hong

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  46-53. 

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The Cognitive Test Anxiety Scale was used to select 75 students as subjects with higher,medium or lower test anxiety respectively from 550 students.Then the Deese-Roediger-McDermott(DRM)paradigm was used to evoke the subjects.false memory to explore the influence of test anxiety on their false memory.The results showed that:(1)The DRM paradigm was effective in eliciting subjects.false memory of non-presented lures;(2)The medium test anxiety subjects.false memory was least;(3)The higher anxiety subjects.false recognition in arousal situation was significantly higher than the other two groups in normal situation.The subjects.medium test anxiety would decrease their false memory and enhance their cognitive performances.

Readers’ Reality-predictive and Preference-predictive Inferences in Narrative Comprehension

LÜ Chao, MO Lei, WU Li-mei

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  54-60. 

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When readers experience narratives,their expectations about the likelihood of narrative events are informed by two types of propensity.Reality-predictive inferences incorporate real-world constraints involving,for example,time and space and so on;preference-predictive inferences incorporate concerns about outcomes that emerge from the plot.The goal of this article was to explore the role of these two types of inferences in narrative comprehension.Participants read stories in which the scenario provided a biasing context and a preference statement.The experiments assessed participants reading times for statement describing the state of events following different scenarios.Experiment 1 demonstrated that readers could immediately encode both reality-predictive and preference-predictive inferences in text reading.In Experiment 2,readers were grouped according to their scores of EPQ.Results showed that for the affectivity oriented readers the activation of preference-predictive inference were stronger than that of reality-predictive inference and vice versa for the non-affectivity oriented readers.

The Risk Aversion in Gamblers with Different Self-Esteem

YANG Juan, ZHANG Qing-lin

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  61-65. 

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In order to explore the risk aversion in gamblers with different self-esteem,263 college students finished the Rosenberg self-esteem scale,the implicit association test and played blackjack 140 times.The results were as follows: (1)In the blackjack game,all the participants were inclined to avert the high risk.(2)Among the high explicit self-esteem participants,people with lower implicit self-esteem were more likely to avert the risk.Among the low implicit self-esteem participants,people with higher explicit self-esteem were more likely to avert the risk.Risk aversion reflected people's ego-defense mechanism,therefore,these results displayed that people with higher explicit and lower implicit had ego-defense strategies.

Phonological Instruction Promotes the Phonological Awareness and Knowledge of Letters of Children in Kindergarten

ZHENG Xiao-bei, WANG Zheng-ke, LIU Dong-mei, XU Jie, LI Wen-ling, MENG Xiang-zhi

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  66-71. 

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Phonological awareness plays a key role in the acquisition of English reading.In the present study,the authors trained the children in phonological awareness by the self-made materials and games according to the development of English phonological awareness in which the children can learn alphabets,words,and sentences.Sixty-three 3-year-old children(from a normal kindergarten in Beijing)were recruited into two groups by random.One is the experimental group with phonological instruction,and the other is the control ing group with the traditional method.After eight weeks, the children in experimental group outperformed obviously the control group on the sylabic awareness,rhyme awareness, phonemic awareness and knowledge of letters,especially the first two.These results showed that phonological instruction can(possibly)promote the phonological awareness in kindergarten.

The Training Study of Chinese Children and Adults’ Audiovisual English Phonetic Perception

LI Yan-fang, DONG Qi

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  72-78. 

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With 22 primary school students in Grade 5 and 29 freshmen as the subjects,the study explored the effective way for the Chinese children and adult to discriminate difficult English phonemes.In the pre-and post-testing,all the subjects were required to discriminate/s/and/θ/in the audio-only,audio-visual congruent,audio-visual incongruent and visual-only modality.Then half of the subjects received the audio-only training,and another half received audiovisual training,the training process lasted for ten days,and thirty minutes each day.The results showed that:(1)After training,the children received audiovisual training performed significantly better than those received audio-only training in the visual testing modality,there was no difference in other testing modality;(2)In all of the testing modality,there were no significant differences between the adults received audio-only training and audiovisual training.The results showed that,compared with the adults,children showed more strong plasticity of audiovisual phonetic perception.

A Comparative Study on the Synergistic Learning of Implicit and Explicit Between Excellent Students and Students with Learning Disabilities

GE Cao, SHEN De-li, BAI Xue-jun

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  79-82,91. 

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According to the current standard,120 excellent students and 120 students with learning disabilities were selected.Bi-conditional artificial grammar letter strings and match-edit task paradigms in implicit learning research was used,this two kinds of students'implicit learning as well as the synergistic learning of implicit and explicit manipulation was to be compared.The results were as follows:(1)There was no significant difference in implicit learning performance between excellent students and students with learning disabilities.Performance of excellent students in explicit learning, the synergistic learning of implicit and explicit(first learn in implicit learning and then the explicit learning as well as the alternate learning)was significantly better than that of students with learning disabilities.(2)Scores of excellent students in explicit learning,and in the synergistic learning of implicit and explicit were significantly higher than the scores of implicit learning.There was no significant difference between the performances of students with learning disabilities among four kinds of learning styles.These results suggested that effect of conscious learning and its synergistic learning with unconscious learning for excellent students was better than unconscious learning,whereas effect of conscious learning and its synergistic learning with unconscious learning for the students with learning disabilities had no significant difference with unconscious learning.

The Effect of Representational Mode of Information and Personality Traits of Learners on the Learning in Multimedia Environment

KANG Cheng, ZHOU Ai-bao

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  83-91. 

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The research involves in two experiments.The first one,the declarative knowledge is the study content,in the second,the study content is the procedural knowledge.Under the two conditions,the two experiments respectively explore the influence of informational representational modes,the different cognitive style and spatial ability of learners on the multimedia learning effect in multimedia environment in between-subject design.The result indicated,Firstly, different cognitive style had influence on the learning effect of declarative knowledge in multimedia environment,while representational modes of multimedia information and spatial ability of learning did not.Secondly,as for the retention of procedural knowledge,representational modes of multimedia information and cognitive style of learners had influence on the learning effect of procedural knowledge in multimedia environment,while,the spatial ability of learners did not. Moreover,different cognitive style had different impact on different presentation modes of multimedia information. Finally,as for the transfer of procedural knowledge,representational modes of multimedia information,cognitive style and spatial ability of learners had influence on the learning effect of procedural knowledge in multimedia environment. Besides,different cognitive style and spatial ability had different impact on different presentation modes of multimedia information.

Relationship Between Attachment to Parents and Peers and Coping Style of the Left-home Kids in Junior Middle School

XIAO Cong-ge, CHEN Xu

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  92-96. 

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This study investigated the relationship between attachment to parents and peers and coping style of the Left-home kids in J unior Middle School.By convenient sampling,492 Left-home kids in Junior Middle School and 514 Non Left-home kids completed Inventory of parent and peer attachment(IPPA)and Coping Style Scale of Middle School Students(CSSMSS).The results indicated:(1)The Left-home kids scored higher than those Non Left-home on the attachment to parents and peers.On problem-solving and help-seeking,the Left-home kids'scores was lower.On feeling-ventilation,the results were diverse.(2)There were significant correlations between parents and peers attachment and coping style.Attachment to parents and peers was positively related to problem-solving and help-seeking.On fantasy and tolerance,the results were diverse.Trust to,communication with and alien to parents and peers were related to coping style.

A Study of the Predictive Validity of Explicit and Implicit Self-esteem for Subjective Well-being of University Students

GENG Xiao-wei, ZHANG Feng, ZHENG Quan-quan

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  97-102. 

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To examine the predictive validity of explicit and implicit self-esteem for subjective well-being(SWB)of university students,based on the Implicit Association Test(IAT)and scales,a total of 111 university students was tested.Results showed that(1)self-esteem consisted of dual components which involve an implicit component and an explicit component.(2)explicit self-esteem and implicit self-esteem could both predict SWB of university students significantly.

Teacher’s Job Satisfaction and Performance:The Mediating Role of Job Burnout

MENG Hui, LIANG Qiao-fei, LI Young-xin, XIONG Mei

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  103-107. 

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This longitudinal study is intended to examine the relationships among job satisfaction,job burnout and performance.Data were collected from 398 kindergarten and primary school teachers.Results of the SEM showed that job satisfaction was positively related to performance,and the relat ionship was mediated by emotional exhaustion.Job satisfaction was the best predictor for three dimensions of job burnout,emotional exhaustion was negatively related to performance,depersonalization and personal accomplishment were not related to performance.

The Influences of Teacher’s Stress on Job Burnout:The Moderating Effect of Teaching Efficacy

LIU Yi, WU Yu-ju, XING Qiang

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  108-113. 

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Based on the study of the questionnaire of 743 teachers in middle and primary schools,the thesis probed into the moderating effects of teaching efficacy on the relationship between occupational stress and job burnout.Findings of the study confirmed the following aspects:(1)Sources of stress such as characteristics of teaching posts and students could effectively predict teachers'job burnout.As length of service increased,the main predictor varied from characteristics of posts to social characteristics.(2)Moderating effects of teaching efficacy varied with demographic indicators,of which general teaching efficacy and personal teaching efficacy manifested different moderating effects.(3)General teaching efficacy demonstrated linear moderating effects while personal teaching efficacy presented quadratic moderating effects. The nature of these two moderating were determined by various occupational stress sources.

The Effects of Role Stressors on Physical Health and Mental Health among Chinese Teachers

LI Chao-ping, ZHANG Yi

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  114-119. 

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The applicability of the role stressors scale was investigated under Chinese context.Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)of data from a sample of 586 teachers from six different schools confirmed the three-factor structure,and Cronbach's alpha coefficients for all three scales were above 01701 Confirmatory Factor Analysis(CFA)of data from another sample of 612 teachers further confirmed its'factorial validity.Then hierarchical regression analysis was used to explore the effects of role conflict,role ambiguity and role overload on teachers'physical health and mental health. Results showed that role overload,role ambiguity and role conflict were all negative predictors for teachers'physical health and mental health.

The Measure of the Work-family Conflict of Chinese Elementary and Secondary School Teachers

WU Ming-xia, ZHANG Da-jun, CHEN Xu, YU Lin, GUO Cheng

Psychological Development and Education. 2009, 25(1):  120-127. 

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This research was aimed to explore the structure of the work-family conflict(WFC)of Chinese elementary school and secondary school teachers,and to develop the qnestionaire to investigate it.The structure was revealed according to the review of current literature,open-ended questionnaire survey,interview with teachers,and data analysis bused on 1025 efficiency samples.The WFC structure of Chinese elementary school and secondary school teachers consisted of two parts:work interfere with family(WIF)and family interfere with work(FIW).Each part included 3 dimensions:emotion,mental resources and behavior pattern.Based on this structure,the questionnaire was developed which had 22 items and was proved to be of good reliability and validity so that it could be used to investigate the WFC of Chinese elementary school and secondary school teachers.