Search

IN RECENT YEARS, ISSUES relating to moral and conventional values have been emphasized in educational policies. This study examines young children's (100 children aged 4-8 years) own understandings of values and rules for how to treat others and participate in school. Eleven classrooms, within seven different elementary schools in Queensland, were visited. Children were interviewed regarding their views about moral and conventional issues, rules and participation in everyday school life. According to the children, 'doing the right thing' in school involved both a concern for others' wellbeing and for the social order in school, including conventions, rules and behaviour connected with discipline. The children's responsibility seemed, however, to be to adapt to the (school) system, rather than being an active participant in constructing the system., Introduction It is widely understood that early education is a significant arena in which children learn about moral and conventional values. Values education, beginning in the early years, is often [...]

Are children's statements about their futures related to outcomes in middle age? In 1966 almost 13,500 children ages 12-13 were asked whether they thought their futures would be worse, similar or better as compared to others of their own age. It was shown that children with low, and surprisingly high, expectations did suffer from increased mortality, economic hardship and weak labor market attachment risks in middle age. Although it cannot be ruled out that expectations worked as self-fulfilling prophesies, the analyses showed that expectations essentially reflected facts known to the children (i.e., upbringing conditions and their own abilities and achievements)., Introduction Do children's expectations predict success or failure over the life course? Are children who think they will do worse than others likely to do so? What about those who [...]

This exploratory study described Taiwanese children's perceptions of peace and what they think children can do to make peace. In-depth interviews were conducted with 60 Taiwanese children ages 4 to 18 years. The most predominant themes for the perceptions of peace were what peace is not, prosocial behaviors, positive emotions, and positive evaluations of peace. Approximately half of the children (48%) provided specific strategies for making peace. The suggested strategies generally were based on the child's immediate environment, such as 'don't fight,' 'don't argue,' and specific prosocial behaviors. 52% of children either said, 'I don't know' when asked what children can do to make peace, or did not feel empowered to make peace. The initial findings were interpreted in terms of sociocultural issues, such as cultural heritage and upbringing, as well as within a political context. DOI 10.2466/PR0.105.F.1095-1102

When adults make a joint commitment to act together, they feel an obligation to their partner. In 2 studies, the authors investigated whether young children also understand joint commitments to act together. In the first study, when an adult orchestrated with the child a joint commitment to play a game together and then broke off from their joint activity, 3-year-olds (n = 24) reacted to the break significantly more often (e.g., by trying to re-engage her or waiting for her to restart playing) than when she simply joined the child's individual activity unbidden. Two-year-olds (n = 24) did not differentiate between these 2 situations. In the second study, 3- and 4-year-old children (n = 30 at each age) were enticed away from their activity with an adult. Children acknowledged their leaving (e.g., by looking to the adult or handing her the object they had been playing with) significantly more often when they had made a joint commitment to act together than when they had not. By 3 years of age, children thus recognize both when an adult is committed and when they themselves are committed to a joint activity. Keywords: social--cognitive development, joint action, joint commitment, obligation

Three studies were conducted to explore Chinese children's understanding of shyness. In Study 1 (N = 174, M age = 10.18) interviews with Chinese children revealed a group of diverse [...]

This study examined the effects of climbing ladders, wall bars, perches, and ropes in changing students' attitudes and emotions associated with sport climbing. The tasks were part of a physical education instructional curriculum of primary schools in Italy. Boys and girls (N=80), ages 10 to 11 years, were involved in a 10-lesson intervention during their curricular lesson. Participants were from six normal classes ranging in size from 16 to 18 children. Three classes were assigned randomly to an experimental group and the other three to a control group. The experimental group performed challenging climbing tasks, while the control group engaged in other physical activities. Analysis of variance indicated that scores on the Climbing Pictures Test differed significantly after the intervention, with children in the experimental group scoring lower on avoidance of climbing situations and higher on positive emotions.

Few studies have addressed the experiences or perceptions of adult children of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) parents. In this study, 46 adult children of LGB parents were interviewed, and their perceptions of how growing up with LGB parents influenced them as adults were examined. Qualitative analysis revealed that adults felt that they were more tolerant and open minded and had more flexible ideas about gender and sexuality as a function of growing up with LGB parents. Participants often felt protective of their parents and the gay community, and some went to great efforts to defend them to peers, family members, and society. Some participants struggled with issues of trust in adulthood, which they related to the experience of their parents' unexpected coming out, as well as to experiences of teasing and bullying. The importance of understanding these findings in the context of societal heterosexism is discussed. Keywords: children, gender, lesbian, gay, parents

The authors explored mental-state reasoning ability among 72 preschoolers (ages 3-5 years) as a possible developmental mechanism for the well-known social loafing effect: diminished individual effort in a collaborative task. The authors expected that older children would outperform young children on standard mental-state reasoning tests and that they would display greater social loafing than younger children. In addition, we hypothesized that the ability to infer the mental states of others would be predictive of social loafing, but that the ability to reason about one's own knowledge would not. The authors gave children three standard false-belief tasks and participated in a within-subjects balloon inflation task that they performed both individually and as part of a group. Results indicated that 3-year-olds performed significantly below older preschoolers on mental-state reasoning tasks. Only 4- and 5-year-olds displayed diminished individual effort. Multiple regression analysis indicated that only the ability to reason about others' false beliefs accounted for a significant amount of variance in social loafing; age (in months) and own false-belief reasoning did not. The authors discussed theoretical and pedagogical implications. Keywords: children, collaboration, development, loafing, theory of mind, WHEN INDIVIDUALS PERFORM A GROUP TASK, they tend to reduce their individual efforts or output relative to that when working alone (Latane, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). This social loafing effect [...]

Two studies were conducted with Cantonese-speaking preschoolers examining J. de Villiers's (1995) hypothesis that syntactic complements play a unique role in the acquisition of false belief (FB). In Study 1, the authors found a positive correlation between FB and syntactic complements in 72 four- to six-year old Cantonese-speaking preschoolers. Study 2 followed 72 three- to five-year-old Cantonese-speaking children who initially failed an FB screening task and were then tested on general language abilities, short-term memory, inhibition, nonverbal IQ, and on FB and complement tasks. Once age and initial FB understanding were controlled for in both multiple regression and hierarchical linear modeling analyses, complements no longer uniquely predicted FB. Instead, individual differences in general language abilities and short-term memory contributed to the variation in both complements and FB. Keywords: theory of mind, language, complements, Chinese, hierarchical linear modeling

In 2 experiments, the authors examined the evolution of folkbiological reasoning in children (4 to 10 years of age) and adults from 4 distinct communities (rural Native American, rural majority culture, and suburban and urban North Amefican communities). Using an adoption paradigm, they examined participants' intuitions regarding the inheritance of properties and the mechanisms underlying the transmission of kindhood. Across all communities and ages, there was a strong biological component underlying reasoning about the inheritance of properties. There were also differences in children's intuitions about the mechanisms underlying kindhood: Native American children were more likely than their counterparts to consider blood as a candidate biological essence. This suggests that as children search to discover the underlying essence of a biological kind, they are guided by broad essentialist notions that are shaped by discourse within their community. Keywords: culture, cognition, folkbiology, development

A study on thrift and saving trends in Canada is presented. The study examines the impact of education, earnings, and parents' saving behavior, on child's inclination towards savings. The study also examines the compares the saving habits of French and English speaking populations with Canadians and immigrants from other parts of the world.

A study on the saving habits of children is presented. The type of savings preferred by different age groups is also discussed.

A total of 107 Malay primary school girls (8-9 yr. old) completed a set of measurements on eating behavior (ChEAT, food neophobia scales, and dieting experience), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, body shape satisfaction, dietary intake, weight, and height. About 38% of the girls scored 20 and more on the CHEAT, and 46% of them reported dieting by reducing sugar and sweets (73%), skipping meals (67%), reducing fat foods (60%) and snacks (53%) as the most frequent methods practiced. In general, those girls with higher ChEAT scores tended to have lower self esteem (r = .39), indicating they were more unwilling to try new foods (food neophobic) (r = .29), chose a smaller figure for desired body size (r = .25), and were more dissatisfied with their body size (r = .31).

The author assessed preschool-aged children's attitudes (N = 70) toward their own and 2 ethnic or racial out-groups using traditional forced-choice measures and a new method that assessed children's out-group attitudes independently of their attitudes toward their own group. When required to assign positive and negative traits to either their own group or an ethnic or racial out-group, children evaluated their own group favorably relative to the out-group in question. However, when not forced to choose between groups, children evaluated out-groups positively, indicating that own-group preference relative to ethnic and racial out-groups was not equated with out-group rejection. Children's positive out-group evaluations did vary with the out-group being considered and were reflective of the local social context, suggesting the influence of social learning. The results indicate that young children's positive feelings toward their own group do not necessarily involve or cause negative out-group attitudes and that various factors might differentially influence in-group and out-group attitudes. key words: development, ethnic attitudes, ethnic identity, intergroup attitudes, prejudice, IN THE PAST, PEOPLE COMMONLY BELIEVED that young children were not aware of racial differences and that prejudice and discrimination were largely adult issues (Allport, 1958). However, early researchers of [...]

Children categorize themselves and others along racial lines, leading them to perceive members of other racial groups as different from themselves. Teaching children to decategorize their perceptions of people could help them to see more self--other similarities than differences. Fourth-grade children (N = 65) were randomly assigned to be taught a short lesson on decategorizing people or to be read a story. As hypothesized, children in the experimental group scored significantly lower on the Racial Decategorization scale (Jones, 2001) than did children in the control group. The study demonstrates the benefits of teaching decategorization. Elementary school curricula including these lessons could reduce biased categorization and possibly promote the development of more nonprejudiced children.

The aim of this study is to investigate, identify, and describe children's concepts of teachers' ways of relating to play. This study relates to the need to discern children's concepts [...]

After almost 60 years of research, how children come to understand death and what factors contribute to this development continue to generate interest. This paper critically reviews published research since the early 1980s, with a specific focus on the development of components of the death concept in children. Studies are reviewed with respect to the effects of age, cognitive development, type of object inquired about, culture and SES, experience with death, and emotional factors on the development of children's understanding of death. While these studies indicate that by 10 years of age most children have mastered the components of irreversibility, universality, non-functionality, personal mortality, and causality, acquisition of individual components appears to be differentially affected by several factors. Cognitive development, verbal ability, and cultural and religious experiences appear to influence the acquisition of abstract components such as universality. Direct experience appears to affect the acquisition of physically-based components, such as non-functionality and irreversibility. In addition, the components appear to have different developmental trajectories. Emotional factors appear to play a significant role in how children respond to questions about death and might be highly influential in the development of their understanding of death. Directions for future research are presented with attention to theoretical issues and the ongoing methodological problems in the study of children's conceptions of death.

This study was conducted to clarify how mothers's view of safety and their cautions given to children correlate with children's views of safety and behavior. Questionnaires were administered to 128 children in Grade 3 and 135 in Grade 6 as well as their 263 mothers and 6 teachers. Responses were analyzed with respect to 'safeness,' 'respect for others,' and 'impatience.' These indicated mothers' cautions were stronger in promotion of the third-grade children's basic security than mothers' view on safety. In contrast, the view of safety and behaviors estimated by teachers of the sixth graders correlated significantly with their mothers' view and cautions.

Researchers investigated the existence of factors predicting dieting awareness in pre-adolescent children. They gathered questionnaire responses from 176 boys and girls in four schools in England. The questionnaires provided data on factors including child's height and weight, their preferences concerning body shape, and their attitudes towards the body and self-esteem. The results revealed factors predicting dietary awareness in girls. These factors were their own body mass index and self-esteem, and their mothers' dieting behaviour.

The advancement of knowledge about rights from childhood to adolescence was investigated. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted on 169 8-16 yr-olds to evaluate their knowledge and significance of rights both generally and in children's and teenagers' lives. Findings indicated that what teenagers and children believe about rights are apparently affected by how they view rights in their own lives.

We evaluated the relationship of contextual variables and contingent mother-child interactions to feeding behaviors at home for 3 children (ages 18 to 43 months) with chronic food refusal problems. Previous research suggests that contingent attention (i.e., specific prompts, approval) affects feeding, but contextual variables (i.e., mealtime location, seating arrangement, number of meals and snacks offered daily, persons present during meals) have not been systematically examined. Using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across mother-child dyads, we assessed the effects of parent training in contingency management skills on maternal contingent attention, child food intake, and contextual variables of mealtimes. Parent training resulted in planned increases in contingent attention and child acceptances of target foods for each dyad. Concomitant with this training, 2 children showed positive changes in contextual variables (e.g., reduced frequency of daily meals and snacks to a recommended level, increased proportion of meals eaten at a table), and 1 child evidenced mild deterioration in contextual variables. A second pareto training condition directed at correcting specific ecological parameters with 2 dyads effectively modified these variables, but its impact on child food acceptance was unclear. These findings suggest that some contextual conditions covary with children's feeding patterns and should be monitored in planning and evaluating feeding intervention.

Researchers investigated body dissatisfaction in 140 children aged 7-12 years. They accompanied their investigation with assessments of the children's self-esteem and attitudes towards fat people. The results revealed that girls considered their ideal figure to be one much smaller than their own figure, but there was little difference between the two figures for boys. Girls also considered the ideal figure to be smaller than than the type they believed boys found attractive. Body discontent correlated negatively with self-esteem in boys. Both boys and girls had highly negative attitudes towards fat children.

Children's cognitions, self-reported emotions, and expressive behavior regarding an emotion-eliciting event were studied in kindergarten Dutch Children. Their reactions after meeting 'Sinterklaas' were observed. Girl's self-reports were found related to their expressive behavior, while their cognitions and emotions were inversely related. Boys' cognitions on the other hand, were not related to their emotions.

Many reviewers of the literature on children's sex typing have remarked on the failure of researchers to attend carefully to methodological issues when designing measures of sex typing. In the present article, the importance of conceptually and operationally distinguishing among (a) the target of sex typing (i.e., self vs. others), (b) the form of sex typing (e.g., knowledge vs. attitudes), and (c) the domain of sex typing (e.g., occupations, activities, etc.) is emphasized. Several other methodological issues in measurement design, including the independence and comparability of masculine and feminine items, are also discussed. Finally, newly developed measures of sex typing designed to address these conceptual and methodological issues are described.

This article explores children's and adolescents' awareness of the physical and mental health risks associated with the increasing practice of tattooing. Twelve focus group discussions on attitudes toward tattoos and beliefs about normative behavior, health beliefs, awareness of the long-term consequences of tattooing, and stigmatization were conducted with 80 volunteers, six to 17 years of age. The videotaped discussions revealed that participants' were knowledgeable about tattoos and the process, and were aware that vital transmission and physical disfigurement were possible results. Generally, attitudes toward tattoos were negative, with almost all participants associating them with illicit type activities. However, a more favorable attitude toward small tattoos was discernible among females during early adolescence. Participants suggested that because of the location of tattoos, they might be embarrassing in some instances, and that because of their permanency, young people might regret having them later in life. Some participants revealed they had removed tattoos using crude implements. These data suggest an urgent need for research on prevention of unsafe use of tattooing and piercing implements., Recent research demonstrates that tattoos or body marking practices are increasingly prevalent among adolescents. Many of these tattoos are self-administered or are obtained from friends or amateur tattooists (Houghton & [...]

An analysis of children's appraisals of family conflicts reveals the gender differences in perception and indicates that threat is a stronger predictor of adjustment in boys while self-blame increases girls' internalizing problems. Children's appraisals showed better understanding of marital conflicts than that of mothers, and boys' appraisals were better in comparison with that of girls.

A longitudinal observational study of children's responses to constructive marital fights reveals the balance between the positive and intruding behaviors of toddlers during disputes. Child temperament does not influence constructive marital interactions. Temporal stability, linked to individual differences in child and marital behavior, is observed in interaction between couples and not in individual child behavior.

In 1986, Weiss reported the measurement of the attitudes of 577 children of elementary school age toward mental illness and mentally ill persons relative to other stigmatized groups on a projective measure of social distance. It was concluded that attitudes toward deviant groups were evidenced by Kindergarten and did not change appreciably with increasing age or grade. Eight years later, 35 of the previously examined 65 Kindergarten students were still enrolled in the district. Parental permission to repeat the evaluation was received for 34 of those students. The results of this longitudinal research were remarkably similar to the results in the original cross-sectional research, again leading to the conclusion that attitudes toward the mentally ill become quite stable and enduring by the time a child enters Kindergarten. Only one stigmatized group, mentally retarded persons, significantly changed in terms of social distance and interpersonal attraction toward being more acceptable.

A decade ago DeVogler and Ebersole reported that young adolescents were able to express the fact that they had personal meaning in their lives. In the present study we found that even younger children (26 first graders) could do so also when personal meaning was defined to them as that which in their whole life is most important to them. The high frequency of those reporting a personal meaning goes against the position that a large percentage of individuals in our modern society lack personal meaning., A study of 26 first grade students in southern California reveals that children at that age can also possess personal meaning in their life. However, as opposed to adult and adolescents, personal meaning to them is something which is most important to them. Out of a total of 24 students who could express themselves, 42% chose relationships, 4% health and school, and 8% self-development, beliefs and material success.

A survey of 59 Mexican American children and their mothers reveals that their ethnic identity influences their cooperative, competitive and individualistic preferences which are different from their white counterparts. The Mexican American children acquire the values transmitted to them by their mothers and that, in turn, makes them conform to their own culture and customs. These children reveal more cooperative and less competitive preferences when compared to their Anglo-American counterparts, which probably results from the fact that the Mexican culture emphasizes close family ties.

An examination of self-description by children between the ages of 6 and 10 using goal-directed and baseline self-description methods reveal aspects of self-promotion and ingratiation. Exhibition of selective self-presentation by kindergartners and second and fourth grade students was studied. A child's choice of partner, based on the partner's ability to win a game or on the partner's character, revealed the effects of self-promotion and ingratiation. The former was a preferred method of self-description by second and fourth grade children while the latter was employed more by kindergarten children.

To replicate and expand the Orbach, Gross, and Glaubman (1981) model of suicidal behavior in children, 60 children, ages 6 to 13, reported their own suicidal thoughts and behaviors using the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire (Linehan, 1981). Scores were correlated with the four dimensions of Orbach's model (attraction to life, repulsion by life, attraction to death, and repulsion by death) and with hopelessness using the Hopelessness Scale for Children. A multiple regression analysis indicated that neither attitudes toward life and death nor hopelessness accounted for a significant amount of variance in suicidal behaviors. The only significant correlation was between hopelessness and repulsiveness of death. Hopeless children were less repulsed by death than were relatively more hopeful children. Diminished repulsion by death could be a preliminary warning sign that a normal barrier against suicide is weakening.

This study examined to what extent personality types are related to children's attitudes and aspirations after taking into account relationships between ability and the attitude and aspiration measures. Data were collected from 500 12-yr.-old Australian children. In the analysis the children were classified into four personality groups who were labeled as extravert-adjusted, extravert-anxious, introvert-adjusted, and introvert-anxious. The findings suggest the general proposition that children's personality types have strong associations with school-related attitudes after taking into account associations between children's intellectual ability and their attitudes. In contrast, children's personalities tended not to be related to measures of educational and occupational aspirations.

There is considerable evidence in the recent literature on children's understanding of the mind that young children have difficulty understanding false beliefs. Even when presented very strong evidence that a person's belief conflicts with the reality to which it refers, they tend to assume that it coincides with reality. Two studies tested the extent to which 3-year-olds make this same mistake with other mental states. The results show that children of this age understand that desires can differ from reality before they understand that beliefs can, even when the exact same tasks are used to assess each understanding. The findings also indicate that young children understand pretense in this regard somewhat later than desire but earlier than belief and dream, particularly when the pretense is supported by actions. Three explanations for the results are discussed.

The present paper studied Popular response to the Holtzman Inkblot Technique by Argentine children. The aims of the study were to assess whether Universal Popular responses reported by Knudsen, Gorham, and Moseley appeared also among Argentine children and to analyze how differences on certain intracultural variables, such as social marginality, modified Popular responses. Form A of the test was administered to 593 children attending Grades 4, 5, 6, and 7. Their ages ranged from 9 to 12 yr. This group was subdivided on social integration, yielding a socially marginal group of 57 and a socially integrated one of 536. We noted 15 concepts considered Universal Popular answers were identical for this group, Knudsen's and Holtzman's normative groups. The responses from the nonmarginal Argentine group were compared with those of the socially marginal Argentine group. Contents characteristics of each group suggest the nonmarginal group gave more elaborated and more differentiated responses than those of the marginal group.

Conflict in immigrant communities between parents and children over the right way to live is cast in the idioms of geography. Immigrants tell their children stories about the place they left as a display of their deepest values and understanding of the world. This article explores the nature of this interaction in New York's largest Italian community, Italian Harlem, during a period of significant intergenerational tension. Most scholars of Italian America have suggested that the younger generation turned away from the traditions of their parents in favor of American styles and values. The article challenges this notion of tradition, maintaining instead that the articulation of a 'tradition' is a complex cultural process which does not discover, but creates, the past in response to the needs and dilemmas of the present. 'Southern Italy' was presented to younger Italian-Americans in such a way as to exclude them. An understanding of this often bitter intergenerational tension must be integrated into histories of the Italian-American family.

This study examined the relationships among measures of knowledge of skin cancer, attitudes toward sun exposure, intentions to use sunscreen, and self-reported use of sunscreen by 105 fifth-grade children. Positive correlations were obtained between knowledge and intentions to use sunscreen, knowledge and healthier attitudes, and intentions to use sunscreen and healthier attitudes toward sun exposure. Surprisingly, knowledge, attitudes, and intentions were not significantly associated with reported use of sunscreen. Researchers designing interventions to effect behavioral change, i.e., sunscreen use, in children might further explore the predictive utility of these constructs as well as examine the utility of other important variables not measured here.

Separate bodies of research suggest that young children have a broad tendency to reason about natural phenomena in terms of purpose and an orientation toward intention-based accounts of the origins of natural entities. This article explores these results further by drawing together recent findings from various areas of cognitive developmental research to address the following question: Rather than being 'artificialists' in Piagetian terms, are children 'intuitive theists'disposed to view natural phenomena as resulting from nonhuman design? A review of research on children's concepts of agency, imaginary companions, and understanding of artifacts suggests that by the time children are around 5 years of age, this description of them may have explanatory value and practical relevance.

As children enter kindergarten, the degree to which they like school may be an important determinant of their classroom participation, which in turn may impact their achievement. To explore this [...]

288 Croatian school children, ages 7 to 10 years rated their current and ideal body sizes on Collins' figures and chose the favorite figure for their same-and opposite-sex friends. Girls aged 10 preferred their female friends' figure to be more similar to their own, while boys preferred a friend's to be larger. These findings support cultural ideal of thinness for girls and strength for boys.