A Comparison of Drawings and Sentence Completion Responses of Congenital Heart Children with Normal Children

The House-Tree-Person, Sentence Completion and Inside-of-the-Body tests were administered to 20 congenital heart children and their matched controls. The stories of the H-T-P test of the congenital heart children tended to have more themes about illness-health, and life-death than those of the normal children. Similarly, more themes of illness-health were found in the congenital heart children on the Sentence Completion test (P < .001). Although the congenital heart children did not draw a greater number of hearts than the control children, they did reveal a tendency to draw relatively larger hearts and relatively fewer other internal organs (P < .05).

A major implication of the findings is that the body distortion of a congenital heart child pertains more to his perception of the inside of his body than to the view of his external body. This suggests that the Inside-of-the-Body test would be a useful addition to projective techniques aimed at investigating distortion of body image by the physically handicapped.     

Decision-Making by Children and Young People in the Home: The Nurture of Trust,Participation and Independence

This article presents the findings of a qualitative research study of children and young people (aged 7–17 years) in Ireland. It seeks to investigate whether, for the children and young people involved, the home is a space where supportive, trusting family relationships can be nurtured; where independence grows with age; and where parents listen, discuss and explain decisions made. It furthermore outlines the views and experiences of parents with regard to children and young people’s participation in the home and will focus on relational and spatial aspects of child participation within the home. The study recognizes children and young people as social actors and is also informed by a relational and spatial approach to children’s participation which recognizes the respective roles and positions of children in facilitating child participation. The results indicate that age and issues of trust and tokenism were significant barriers in young people’s participation and decision making at home. Key enablers of children and young people’s participation included spaces where discussion can happen at home, good family relationships, being listened to by parents, trust and growing levels of independence with age, seeing decisions as fair and having the rationale for decisions explained to them by parents. Among suggestions for improvements the most important were designated family spaces for discussion, encouragement of active listening by parents, and promotion of explanation by adults of their decisions.     

Ascription of Maturity to Human Figure Drawings by Preschool Children

Summary

Forty-five preschool children, shown outline human figure drawings (all arbitrarily drawn to the same stature) whose overall body proportions were typical of individuals aged 0, 2, 6, 12, and 25 years, generally distinguished more maturely from less maturely proportioned figures, the absence of nonproportion cues to maturity notwithstanding. This is noteworthy, since agerelated changes in stature and in proportion are confounded in nature, and since our culture emphasizes stature cues and neglects proportion cues to maturity. Although Ss generally distinguished more mature from less mature figures on the basis of body proportions, the proportions of immature individuals nonetheless tended to be assimilated to those of the mature individual.     

Dependency and Independence in Young Children

The present study investigated the hypothesis that a positive relation exists between self-concept and moral judgment in young children. In the first experiment 40 kindergarten children between the ages of 5–1 and 6–6 with mental ability scores ranging from 82 to 144 were each administered a self-concept appraisal and a series of Piagetian moral dilemmas. Product-moment correlations and a multiple-regression analysis evaluated the relationship. When the self-concept and moral-judgment scores were collapsed, all of the moral-judgment factors correlated significantly with at least one self-concept factor. A second experiment tested the implications of the first. Eighty-five children between the ages of 5–11 and 8–4 were given the self-concept and moral-judgment measures. An eight-week communications-training session for randomly selected parents of children scoring below the mean on the self-concept measure was held. Posttesting showed no improvement in self-concept for the experimental group. Implications of these experiments are discussed.     

让青少年远离邪教

挥手告别20世纪,不禁让人想起20世纪末的所谓预言家们的种种预言,什么1999年8月11日人类大劫难,什么天体大十字,都曾让一些人发生联想,诸如猜测第三次世界大战,地磁极倒转,空气污染,饥饿,战争,流行病……但是我们今天来看,这个有鼻子有眼的日子不过是普通得不能再普通的一天罢了!“地球的末日“并未来临,“不祥的灾难“也并未发生,李洪志之流惑众妖言不攻自破.……     

Defining Work Stress in Young People

Stress experienced by young workers can be very different from stress experienced by adults because of differing psychosocial developments. It is important to understand how early workplace experiences shape young workers' subsequent attitudes and behaviors, which may affect their psychological well‐being. This study examined how 18 young workers ages 17–29 perceive work stress. The authors found that young workers view job stress in 3 dimensions: lack of opportunity to learn, poor social interaction, and lack of opportunity to exercise initiative. Young workers also view work demands as challenging tasks and become job crafters to find more satisfaction in routine tasks.     

幼儿遮挡绘画的表征策略与其内在机制的探讨

通过简要回顾儿童遮挡绘画的研究历史,总结了对幼儿遮挡绘画中理智写实性绘画与视觉写实性绘画持不同见解的两种概说:"知见说"与"表征策略说",在此基础上提出新的绘画认知理论——遮挡图式的格式塔渐成论,由此展开幼儿遮挡绘画的表征策略及其与幼儿认知发展的关系的深入探讨。     

青少年药物滥用的防治

随着社会转型所带来的生活方式多元化,青少年药物滥用现象,在威胁着青少年身心健康的同时,也破坏了社会的和谐与发展。一般来说,其形成原因包括自身、家庭、学校和社会等多种因素,因而,预防和解决青少年药物滥用问题,就需要建立一套涉及多个层面的防治体系。     

青少年药物滥用的防治

随着社会转型所带来的生活方式多元化,青少年药物滥用现象,在威胁着青少年身心健康的同时,也破坏了社会的和谐与发展.一般来说,其形成原因包括自身、家庭、学校和社会等多种因素,因而,预防和解决青少年药物滥用问题,就需要建立一套涉及多个层面的防治体系.     

Ritualistic Behavior in Young Children

The aim of this study was to examine ritualistic behavior at its developmental peak. Children 20–59 months of age were sampled through a national system of daycare centers in Israel (N = 228). The order of onset of the ritual behaviors measured was virtually identical to that reported for an American sample (D. W. Evans et al., 1997). Gender and age effects were found for fearfulness but not for ritualistic behavior. Maternal reports of ritualistic behavior were highly correlated with reported fears, and with shy and emotional temperament. Mothers of the children who were in the top 10% in their use of rituals according to maternal report, worried about their child's ritualistic behavior, even though maternal worry was not correlated with ritualistic behavior for the whole distribution.     

Future Thinking in Young Children

ABSTRACT— The study of future thinking is gaining momentum across various domains of psychology. Mentally projecting the self forward in time (i.e., mental time travel) is argued to be uniquely human and of vital importance to the evolution of human culture. Yet it is only recently that developmentalists have begun to study when, and how, this capacity emerges. I begin by outlining the concept of mental time travel, along with newly developed methodologies to test children's ability to mentally project the self into the future. Data suggest that this ability is in place by ages 4 or 5 but also reveal conditions under which children may experience difficulty accurately predicting their future desires. I conclude by discussing how the research on children's mental time travel can be used to further our understanding of the development of future-oriented behaviors, including planning and delaying gratification.     

Reasoning Ability in Young Children

The astrological assumption of personality differences among individuals born under different sun signs was investigated. Significant differences were obtained between sun sign groups on four of the 18 scales of the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) as follows: Communality, Socialization, Flexibility, and Femininity. The overall pattern of results based on F ratios, multiple comparisons between means, and estimates of strength of association was interpreted as showing no meaningful relationships between sun sign and scores on Communality, Socialization, and Flexibility. Adopting even the most conservative standards of inference, however, all of the test statistics employed indicated a powerful effect on the Femininity scale. Implications for future research were discussed.     

Spatial Scaling in Young Children

This article examines the emergence of the ability to use a simple map to acquire information about distance in a larger space. It is commonly believed that scaling is a late achievement in childhood. The present study examined the origins of this ability by using the simplest of situations. In two experiments, we presented preschool children with a dot in a long thin rectangle, and asked them to use that representation to find an object in a corresponding location in a much larger sandbox. All 4-year-olds and a majority of 3-year-olds performed well on this task. We present a model that posits a simpler mechanism for scaling than that proposed in the existing literature.