Marital Status,Home Environments,and Family Strain: Complex Effects on Preschool Children's School Readiness Skills

The current study examined the complex associations among marital status, home environments, and family strain (i.e. income, maternal depressive symptoms, social support, and parenting stress), as they predict preschool children's pre‐academic and social skills at 36 and 54 months. Findings from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 897) showed that the home learning environment, which was significantly lower among single‐parent families, worked as a mediator to explain the relationship between single‐parent families and children's pre‐academic skills at 36 and 54 months. Additionally, parenting stress, which was significantly higher among single‐parent families, worked as a mediator to explain the relationship between single status and the home learning environment. Finally, moderation analyses showed that family income is important for improving the home social environment, and the home social environment is strongly associated with children's social skills in single‐parent families, but not in cohabiting families. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assertion and Accommodation as a Paradoxical Dance in Achieving Self-Formation of Korean Women in Evangelical Churches

In response to Kelly H. Chong’s book, Deliverance and Submission: Evangelical Women and the Negotiation of Patriarchy in South Korea, the purpose of this article is to suggest that the paradigm of self-formation offers more adequate explanations for evangelical women’s fervent participation in heavily patriarchal churches by understanding assertion and accommodation as the paradoxical dance in achieving self-formation of women in Korean evangelical churches.     

Spacing one's study: evidence for a metacognitive control strategy

This article investigated individual control of spacing strategies during study. Three predictions were outlined: The spacing hypothesis suggests that people choose to space their study to improve long-term learning via the spacing effect. The massing hypothesis suggests that people choose to mass their study because of illusions of confidence during study. The metacognitive hypothesis suggests that people control their spacing schedules as a function of their metacognitive judgments of specific to-be-learned items. To test these hypotheses, the authors asked participants to study and make judgments of learning for cue-target pairs. Then, participants were given three choices; they could study the pair again immediately (massed), study the pair again after the entire list had been presented (spaced), or choose not to restudy (done). Results supported a metacognitively controlled spacing strategy-people spaced items that were judged to be relatively easy but massed items that were judged as relatively difficult.     

Religious Service Attendance and Religious and Secular Organizational Engagement in the United Kingdom

The study uses nationally representative data to examine whether the moral freighting Putnam and Campbell (2010) propose, based on American experiences, may apply to overall British society. Specifically, it tests whether religious service attendance increases religious or secular organizational activities, possibly due to moral freighting that encourages religious congregants to practice their faith, transcending ego boundaries and self-interest. It is also necessary to determine if engagement in religious or secular organizational activities elevates the degree of religious service attendance, thus forming a bidirectional association. The study employs the maximum likelihood-structural equation modeling (ML-SEM) method to verify the proposed reciprocity. The empirical tests confirm that a synergistic reciprocal relationship is established between religious service attendance and religious organizational engagement, and that religious service attendance increases secular organizational engagement. However, secular organizational engagement does not make a bidirectional contribution to religious service attendance.     

Longitudinal Associations Among Perceived Intrusive Parental Monitoring,Adolescent Internalization of Values,and Adolescent Information Management

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Drawing upon the Self-Determination Theory of motivations, this 3-year longitudinal study examined whether adolescents’ perceptions of intrusive parental...     

A Latent Profile Analysis of the Criterion-related Validity of a Divergent Thinking Test

The criterion-related validity of divergent thinking (DT) tests has been questioned because of relatively low correlations between DT test scores and creative performance. A possible inhibiting factor in previous correlations—heterogeneity of the sample—has been ignored. If groups with different DT profiles are involved in this line of research, low correlations would not necessarily be indicative of actual relationships, and criterion-related validity would appear to be lower than it is. Thus, this study identified groups with their own unique DT profiles and examined their creative performance. To this end, elementary children’s (N = 325) responses in 3 DT tasks were analyzed using latent profile analysis. Results suggested 3 groups with unique DT profiles: One group scored moderate on fluency and low on originality; another group scored moderate on fluency and high on originality; the third group scored uniformly low across fluency, originality, and flexibility. Surprisingly, only the low-originality group excelled in creative achievement, but the hypothesis of this investigation was supported by the fact that only the high-originality group significantly excelled in ideation. These results confirm that low correlations between DT indices and creative performance do not necessarily indicate a lack of the criterion-related validity of DT tests. Differences between the creative achievement and the ideation criterion measures are detailed, and idiosyncratic properties in DT profiles and their corresponding creative strengths are discussed as educational implications.     

Learners’ choices and beliefs about self-testing

Students have to make scores of practical decisions when they study. We investigated the effectiveness of, and beliefs underlying, one such practical decision: the decision to test oneself while studying. Using a flashcards-like procedure, participants studied lists of word pairs. On the second of two study trials, participants either saw the entire pair again (pair mode) or saw the cue and attempted to generate the target (test mode). Participants were asked either to rate the effectiveness of each study mode (Experiment 1) or to choose between the two modes (Experiment 2). The results demonstrated a mismatch between metacognitive beliefs and study choices: Participants (incorrectly) judged that the pair mode resulted in the most learning, but chose the test mode most frequently. A post-experimental questionnaire suggested that self-testing was motivated by a desire to diagnose learning rather than a desire to improve learning.     

Measuring behavioral regulation in four societies

The present study examined the psychometric properties of scores from a direct measure of behavioral regulation, the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task (HTKS) with 3- to 6-year-old children in the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and China. Specifically, we investigated (a) the nature and variability of HTKS scores, including relations to teacher-rated classroom behavioral regulation; and (b) relations between the HTKS and early mathematics, vocabulary, and literacy skills. Higher HTKS scores were significantly related to higher teacher ratings of classroom behavioral regulation in the United States and South Korea but not in Taiwan and China. Also, higher HTKS scores were significantly related to higher early mathematics, vocabulary, and literacy skills beyond the influence of demographic variables and teacher-rated classroom behavioral regulation. These initial findings suggest that HTKS scores may be interpreted as reflecting early behavioral regulation in these 4 societies and that behavioral regulation is important for early academic success in the United States and in Asian countries.     

Confucianism and the Lack of the Development of the Self Among Korean American Women

In this essay, I will examine how the societal attribution of women's subordinate role in society influences their psychological health and results in the undesirable effect of broken relationships. I will argue that (1) Confucianism has been a major influence in creating a subordinate role for women in Korea; (2) the societal expectation of women's subordinate role contributes to the arrest in the development of the self in women; and (3) the lack of the development of the self among women brings further broken relationships by causing in women grandiosity, low self-esteem, and a pervasive sense of shame.