Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-07-02
Abstract： The development of prosocial behaviors (e.g., helping, sharing) is an important part of children’s moral development. Previous research has indicated that the freedom to make choices (whether children make choices for themselves or other people make choices for them) has an important impact on children’s prosocial motivation and behaviors. However, little research has investigated the impact of the relatedness between the child and the adult who makes the choices, or the provision of reasonable explanations on children’s prosocial behaviors. Therefore, across two studies, we investigated how, one, the freedom to make choices, two, the relatedness between children and the adults who make choices for them, and/or three, the provision of reasonable explanations for those choices, may influence children’s prosocial motivation and behaviors. We conducted both studies with children aged 4–5 in China. In Study 1, children were asked to make decisions about sharing stickers with a puppet. They were randomly assigned to one of three choice conditions: self–choice, mother–choice, and experimenter–choice. In the self–choice condition, the child could decide for themselves whether to share with a puppet or not; in the mother–choice condition, the child’s mother instructed the child to share, and in the experimenter–choice condition, the experimenter instructed the child to share. After this, we measured children’s feelings during the sharing task, and their sharing behaviors towards a novel partner. Meanwhile, mothers in the self–choice and the mother–choice conditions completed a questionnaire measuring child–mother relatedness. We found that although there was no overall significant difference in children’s sharing behaviors or feelings across the three conditions, mother-child relatedness significantly moderated the effect of choice condition on children’s sharing feelings. Children who had positive relationships with their mothers demonstrated positive feelings when their mothers made the choice for them, similar to when they made the choice themselves. However, those who had neutral or negative relationships with their mothers, demonstrated worse feelings when their mothers made the choice for them compared to when they made the choice themselves. In Study 2, we employed similar methods, but used the following three conditions: the self–choice condition, the mother reasonable–choice condition (where the mother provided a reasonable explanation for the choice) and the mother unreasonable–choice condition (where the mother forced the child to share without providing a reason). We found that, when sharing with the first puppet, children were significantly more likely to share in the mother reasonable–choice and mother unreasonable–choice conditions than in the self–choice condition. However, when sharing with a new puppet, children in the mother reasonable–choice condition shared more stickers than those in the self–choice condition or the mother unreasonable–choice condition. Taken together, these two studies show that children’s prosocial motivations do not necessarily decrease when others make choices for them. Instead, for children positively connected with their mothers, following their mother’s choices can lead to positive feelings to a similar degree as those experienced when making choices themselves. Additionally, mothers’ reasonable choices and guidance can facilitate subsequent sharing behaviors. The findings of this study have significant implications about the development of preschoolers' prosocial motivation.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Item position effect (IPE) refers to the item parameter non-invariance when the same item is placed at different positions of the tests, after controlling for the influence of random errors. The presence of IPE causes the violation of the critical parameter invariance assumption made in item response theory, making the applications such as test equating and computerized adaptive testing at risk. At present, the existing researches in this field mainly focus on the detection and modeling of IPE. However, more research efforts are needed to further explain the consequences of the detected IPE and to provide an in-depth discussion of IPE under different scenarios, which is of great importance to both basic research and practical applications.
Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2021-11-13
Abstract： A large body of studies have shown that home literacy environment (HLE) can significantly promote children’s receptive vocabulary development. However, the blurry operationalization of HLE’s construct and the inconsistency of effect sizes (ESs) in recent studies have made it difficult to understand what really works for children’s receptive vocabulary development at home. This meta-analysis systematically reviewed empirical studies published from 1990 to 2021 to clarify HLE constructs, investigate the main effects, and explore potential moderators. A comprehensive search of peer-reviewed published research resulted in 84 articles. Results of random effects model indicated a significant, moderate relation between HLE and children’s receptive vocabulary development, r=0.31, p<0.01. Moderator analysis showed that the ESs of HLE decreased significantly across time periods, while those the frequency of shared reading were stable during past 30 years. The ESs of HLE obtained by questionnaires and the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment did not lead to significant differences, while those of the frequency of shared reading obtained by Children’s Title Checklist were significantly higher than those obtained by questionnaires. No moderating effects of cultural backgrounds or child’s age were detected. Findings suggest that there is a need to refine the conceptual framework and measurement methods of HLE, especially paying more attention to social-economic and cultural influences.
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