Self-esteem and beliefs about memory in environmentally stable and relocated students

This research examined beliefs about the utility of environmental, semantic, and phonological cues for remembering, as these beliefs are related to feelings of self-esteem, assertiveness, and locus of control. We proposed different types of relationships between self-esteem (and assertiveness) and metamemory for two group of college students, based on their differential experiences with distinctive memory failures. For students who were familiar with their current environment, self-esteem was positively related to confidence in having a good memory. It was only for newcomers—students who had recently moved to a new environment—that beliefs about the benefits of environmental cues were positively related to self-esteem and assertiveness. These results suggested that if newcomers were less aware of the utility of environmental cues, they were more likely to attribute their memory failures to their own inadequacies. We also obtained evidence that subjects with an internal locus of control were more knowledgeable regarding the utility of environmental cues than were externally oriented subjects.     

Perspective taking in children's narratives about jealousy

This study explored relationships between perspective‐taking, emotion understanding, and children's narrative abilities. Younger (23 5‐/6‐year‐olds) and older (24 7‐/8‐year‐olds) children generated fictional narratives, using a wordless picture book, about a frog experiencing jealousy. Children's emotion understanding was assessed through a standardized test of emotion comprehension and their ability to convey the jealousy theme of the story. Perspective‐taking ability was assessed with respect to children's use of narrative evaluation (i.e., narrative coherence, mental state language, supplementary evaluative speech, use of subjective language, and placement of emotion expression). Older children scored higher than younger children on emotion comprehension and on understanding the story's complex emotional theme, including the ability to identify a rival. They were more advanced in perspective‐taking abilities, and selectively used emotion expressions to highlight story episodes. Subjective perspective taking and narrative coherence were predictive of children's elaboration of the jealousy theme. Use of supplementary evaluative speech, in turn, was predictive of both subjective perspective taking and narrative coherence.