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.     

Relationality in Kohut's psychology of the self

In this essay, I will posit that Kohut's psychology of the self portrays relationality and that its relationality can be categorized into the explicit aspects. I will also put forth the six aspects of relationality contained in Kohut's psychology of the self as relational, dynamic, wholistic, unilateral, mutual, and doxological and they can be summarized as following: (1) Relational: Narcissism is not self-love but is a particular kind of object relationship; (2) Dynamic: The most central self is dynamic or agentic and not defined in substantival attributes; (3) Wholistic: The whole of the self is important; (4) Unilateral: In order for one's self to develop, one is in need of and at the receptive end of another's empathy; (5) Mutual: Others’ empathy is needed in maintaining the health of the developed selves; and (6) Doxological: Joy and thanksgiving are natural expression of developed selves.     

The effectiveness of Dry Bed Training for nocturnal enuresis in adults

Nine enuretic adults were successfully treated by the Dry Bed Training in a fairly short time (means = 15 weeks) including the retraining period for 3 Ss who relapsed after the therapy. There were no differences between primary and secondary (nocturnal) enuretics. The few relapses were neutralized by a short retraining. The study shows that this minimal intervention treatment is effective and efficient.     

Philosophy of Technology and Macro-ethics in Engineering

The purpose of this paper is to diagnose and analyze the gap between philosophy of technology and engineering ethics and to suggest bridging them in a constructive way. In the first section, I will analyze why philosophy of technology and engineering ethics have taken separate paths so far. The following section will deal with the so-called macro-approach in engineering ethics. While appreciating the initiative, I will argue that there are still certain aspects in this approach that can be improved. In the third, fourth, and fifth sections, I will point out three shortcomings of engineering ethics in terms of its macro-level discourse and argue that a number of certain insights taken from the study of philosophy of technology could be employed in overcoming those problems. In the concluding section, a final recommendation is made that topics of philosophy of technology be included in the curriculum of engineering ethics.     

Trends of Religious Identification in Korea: Changes and Continuities

Korea's religious context is not simple. According to the 2005 Korean Census, the Korean population consists of 23 percent Buddhists, 18 percent Protestants, and 11 percent Catholics, with 47 percent nonreligious. To accurately describe Korean religion in recent periods, we have used 1985, 1995, and 2005 Korean Censuses. We found that Korean people became more religious from 1985 to 1995, but that change was stalled from 1995 to 2005. The percentages of Buddhists and Protestants exhibited little change, and Buddhism continues to be an important religion in the lives of Koreans. Only the number of Catholics increased from 5 percent in 1985 to 11 percent in 2005, and the increasing percentage of Catholics occurred within all subgroups, regardless of age, gender, education, home ownership, and urbanicity.     

Underlying mechanisms of initial feelings of knowing in children

Past research has pointed to two contrasting mechanisms behind feeling‐of‐knowing judgments (FOKs). The trace‐based account proposes a direct internal monitor that detects the presence or non‐presence of a target item. The inferential account dictates that judgments are actually based on cues external to the memory trace, such as familiarity; FOKs could therefore be based on sometimes misleading information. Thus, while a direct mechanism will lead to good learning strategies (i.e. successful searches), an inferential process could potentially lead to less optimal strategies (i.e. search for unknown target information). The question posed in this research was: What processes underlie the judgments children make prior to fully retrieving a target item? We used a simplified version of Reder and Ritter's (1992 ) game show paradigm to investigate the accuracy (and mechanism) of children's initial FOKs. The experiment found that initial FOKs were largely driven by familiarity of the cues. These data have important implications for strategies children utilize in educational settings.     

Contextualization in Perspective

In this article, we examine the hypothesis that problem comprehension and computational processes interact during the solving of an arithmetic word problem. Two experiments tested subjects on a series of addition and subtraction word problems, the content of which varied on the basis of problem type and on the magnitude of the numbers involved (problem size). Performance data are presented and analyzed in terms of solution reaction times and error patterns. Results confirmed the main effects of problem size and problem type as factors determining reaction times but failed to show any significant interaction between the two factors. These results suggest that the cognitive processes involved in understanding an arithmetic word problem and in performing the required computations are best explained by a serial processing model. The absence of an interaction between problem comprehension and computational processes questions the notion that automatized retrieval facilitates problem solving and assertions suggesting that increasing computational requirements can interfere with problem-solving performance.     

Attention to context: U.S. and Japanese children's emotional judgments

A growing number of studies suggest cultural differences in the attention and evaluation of information in adults (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Hedden, Ketay, Aron, Markus, & Gabrieli, 2008). One cultural comparison, between Westerners, such as Americans, and Easterners, such as the Japanese, suggest that Westerners typically focus on a central single object in a scene while Easterners often integrate their judgment of the focal object with surrounding contextual cues. There are few studies of whether such cultural differences are evident in children. This study examined 48 monolingual Japanese-speaking children residing in Japan and 48 monolingual English-speaking children residing in the U.S.A. (40 to 60 month-olds) in a task asking children to complete a picture by adding the proper emotional expression to a face. The key variable was the context and shift in context from the preceding trial for the same pictured individual. Japanese children were much more likely to shift their judgments with changes in context whereas children from the United States treated facial expression in a more trait-like manner, maintaining the same expression for the individual across contexts.