Character Behavior Research Articles

Developmental differences in responses to a television character's appearance and behavior.

Developmental differences in responses to a television character's appearance and behavior.

A Child with Much to Teach

A Child with Much to Teach Nina Mikkelsen (bio) Crago, Maureen and Hugh . Prelude to Literacy: A Preschool Child's Encounter with Picture and Story. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. In trying to understand how children interact with text and picture, critics often question whether children read differently from adults. In their study of the child's responses to stories, Maureen and Hugh Crago, practicing psychotherapists as well as literary critics, reach some conclusions about this subject as they examine a broader question: how do very young children respond to the books they see and hear? In particular, how do children develop mastery of literary and artistic conventions? In this case the child is Anna, the Crago's daughter, who between the age of twelve months and five years responded primarily to fantasy in picture book and chapterbook for the diary her parents maintained. The Crago study is different from two parent diaries that preceded it. Both Dorothy White's Books Before Five (1954; rpt. Heinemann 1984), which the Cragos say served them as a model, and Dorothy Butler's Cushla and Her Books (Hodder and Stoughton, 1979), are divided in focus between evaluative description of books and a child's response to them, and coverage of each area is therefore reduced. As well as providing evaluations, White and Butler are less systematic about making generalizations about the child's responses; the Cragos conclude each chapter with analysis of Anna's responses. And the Cragos seem to be more consciously aware than their predecessors of the part they themselves play as mediators of the child's literary experience; they carefully note each time they feel their behavior might have been a conditioning factor in the highly interactive process of book-sharing (as when they read, with highly dramatized voices, passages that Anna later memorizes or often quotes). The Cragos provide a more comprehensive account of Anna's response to books than either White or Butler. Part One of their book includes Anna's copious responses (impromptu comments and questions) to six books, each for a different six month period. [End Page 153] Anna's earliest response to books (1.8 to 1.11) is important for revealing from the outset behavior consistently seen throughout the period of the study and often exhibited as well by adult readers: the ability to identify objects and creatures from her own conceptual base, to ask for clarification (through look or sound) of what is puzzling, to memorize text, to make statements of interpretation about a character's behavior, to concentrate silently on certain pictures and thus reveal interest and focus, to imitate adult reading behavior, and to transfer book concepts to actions she herself performs. Response to Where the Wild Things Are (2.1 to 2.6) is important in that Anna was interpreting a character's feelings when she described Max as "frightened," as well as asking questions about what she could not see in illustrations. She was processing, out of her own experiences, new concepts that emerged in pictures (calling Max's scepter first a "football," then a "walking stick," finally a "broom"). And she was attending to pictures according to their sequence, rather than focussing on personal preoccupations (a behavior not always typical for her, but indicating a similar capability to that of the adult). Anna's response to a picturebook version of "Rapunzel" (between 3 and 3.5) reveals her assimilation of new ideas to old experiences, with comments and questions about houses and towers reflecting earlier anxieties about closed doors. Thus cognitive and affective responses were not separate; instead the cognitive statement often indicated the underlying emotion. Reading of Hugh Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle (3.11 to 4.5) showed that a child's thin level of verbal response could work positively to reveal what her perceptions were. When Anna concentrated on the earlier parts of the book and then made frequent reference to the character of the Barbary Pirates, who appeared later in the story, she revealed a grasp of what the authors call a "basic binary structure," in which a familiar character or creature, after leaving a familiar place, encounters an unfamiliar...

Children'S experience of three types of cartoon at two age levels.

Three cartoons were shown to 87 children at two age levels: 5-6 years, and 9 years. The children's experience was assessed in interviews. The younger children experienced the cartoons in a fragmentary manner and not as a continuous story, understood less of the cartoons, and tended to base their moral judgements of a character's behaviour on whether or not they identified with that character. Six months later, the younger children remembered best those scenes that had made them the most anxious earlier. A subgroup of children with abundant aggressive fantasies had a lower level of moral reasoning than the other children, preferred violent scenes, became less anxious while watching them and tended to give illogical explanations for the behaviour of the cartoon characters. The degree of anxiety provoked by a cartoon depended not on the amount of explicit violence shown but on the way the violence was presented. One cartoon, which contained no explicit violence, was considered the most frightening one due to its sound effects.

Developmental differences in responses to a television character's appearance and behavior.

Developmental differences in responses to a television character's appearance and behavior.

The development of psychological‐mindedness: Children's understanding of defense mechanisms

Abstract Questions addressed by this study included: “how well do children understand and how do they evaluate defense mechanisms in other children?”; “how does defense understanding relate to perceptions of defensiveness?”; and “do egocentric children have greater difficulty understanding defenses?”; To answer such questions, a sample of children were presented with seven stories illustrating defense mechanisms in “make‐believe”; peers. Children were asked to explain each story character's behavior and evaluate defensive characters for goodness, smartness, happiness, and likableness. Age trends reflected increasing defense understanding with age. Children who better rnderstood defenses were less egocentric. Externalizing defenses (projection, displacement) were perceived in highly unfavorable terms while an internalizing defense (self‐blame) was viewed more positively. Surprisingly, defense understanding related inversely to the favorability of children's evaluations of the defensive peer.

Why John Married Mary: Understanding Stories Involving Recurring Goals

A story understander needs a great deal of knowledge about people's goals. This knowledge is needed to infer explanations for the behavior of the characters in a story. Sometimes a character's behavior cannot be explained in terms of a particular goal, but only in relation to a set of recurring goals that a character anticipates having.The concept of goal subsumption is introduced to deal with these situations. Goal subsumption is a way of planning for many goals at the same time. It occurs in three different types of story situations, each of which has its own rules for recognition and understanding.

Prosocial Behavior, Social Inferential Ability, and Assertiveness in Children

BARRETT, DAVID E., and YARROW, MARIAN RADKE. Prosocial Behavior, Social Inferential Ability, and Assertiveness in Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1977, 48, 475-481. Prosocial behavior in 5-8-year-old children was examined in relation to social inferential ability and assertiveness. It was hypothesized that assertiveness would be a significant predictor of prosocial behavior but that the strength of the relation would depend on the child's ability to make inferences about others' behaviors. 39 boys and 40 girls attending a summer day camp were each observed over a 6-week period and their assertive and prosocial behaviors recorded. Inferential ability was assessed by asking the child to interpret a series of videotaped social episodes in which an affective experience brought about an abrupt change in the central character's behavior. Correct interpretation depended on the subject's comprehending the relation between the earlier events in the sequence and the change in behavior. As hypothesized, assertiveness was positively and significantly related to prosocial behavior for high inferential ability subjects while no significant relations were identified in the low inferential ability group.

The Judaism of Galdos' Daniel Morton

I that in Gloria the religion of Daniel T HAS OFTEN BEEN CLAIMED Morton is merely a superficial pastiche that neither defines nor determines the character's ideology or behavior.1 Yet, in this work, for perhaps the first time in Hispanic letters, a Spanish novelist seeks to vindicate the image of the Jew, to explain his suffering and his moral position, and to present him in a manner that redeems him from the unjust rejection of Christian society. Thus, it is difficult to believe that Gald6s gave little thought to Morton's religious orientation2 and was content to present not a genuine Jew, but one that was so in name only. In order to appreciate the dramatic departure that the author initiates in the character of Morton, it is necessary to remember that in the classic interpretation of Christian theology the Jew is associated with values and ideas that are no longer relevant. Because he adheres to the Old Covenant and renounces the New, he is seen as obdurate, evil and dangerous. In Gloria, however, Gald6s intentionally reinstates the Jew to a position of moral and intellectual dignity. Daniel Morton's principles are all admirable and respectable; furthermore, they are never in conflict with Christian teachings. The Jew is promoted as the exponent of a simple monotheistic religion that is still valid and appropriate. However, in order to present this revised image of the Jew to his Spanish audience, the novelist has to camouflage the character's identity for the entire first half of the novel. There is no doubt that, conscious of ancient Christian and Spanish prejudices toward the Jew, Gald6s felt that, had he divulged his hero's identity at the outset, the unprecedented acceptance of Morton would have been rendered implausible. To understand the nature of Morton's religious commitment we must realize that G ld6s based his research on Judaism almost entirely on the Bible, particularly the later prophetic writings of the Old Testament.3 He hoped to present a Jew who was intimately involved with the vital and always pertinent aspects of his religious heritage: the concern for justice, for reason, and for moral righteousness. In the process the novelist wished to contrast the stark in-

Achievements of male and female storybook characters as determinants of achievement behavior by boys and girls.

The effects of achievement behavior by male and female storybook models on children's own achievement behavior was assessed. Preschoolers heard either a stereotype story depicting achievement behavior by a male, but not by a female, a reversal story depicting achievement behavior by a female, but not by a male, or a control story depicting no achievement behavior by any character. As predicted, a significant Sex X Storybook interaction effect was obtained: Boys persisted longer on a task after hearing a story depicting achievement behavior by a male character than after a story depicting the same behavior by a female, while a nonsignificant trend in the opposite direction was observed for girls. Some additional findings were: Boys were less likely than girls to recall the female character's behavior; and both sexes manifested chauvinistic tendencies in preferences for a same-sex character. These findings are discussed in the context of research demonstrating that most children's books parallel the stereotype story in their portrayal of the sexes. Recent years have witnessed a growing concern over the underrepresentation of women in achieving roles in our society; for example, only 3.6% of the country's lawyers, 9.3% of the doctors, and 16.3% of managers and administrators are women (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1972). The question remains of what can be done to expand women's role. One crucial line of attack is, of course, at the societal level, and we thus find that efforts are being directed toward changing women's legal rights and employment and edu

The Role of Improvisation in Corinne

Corinne begins with an anomaly. In this book to be devoted with exceptional brilliance to the deeds and exploits, to the feelings and thoughts of an extraordinary heroine, it is not the latter who opens the narrative, but one who is in the final analysis a secondary character, Oswald, Lord Nelvil. Corinne herself makes her entry rather late, long after the reader has been accustomed to knowing her solely mediated through the feelings she inspires in others. How is this peculiarity to be explained? Why is an individual who is intended to occupy a supereminent place in the narrative not established in it as of the first moment? The answer to this question is quite clear. Corinne is not a typical novel. Like Jean-Chriqtophe, it is a work of imagination having as its protagonist an individual of genius. But while Tiomain Rolland's work presents this individual to the reader from birth onward in the progression of his genius, Mme. de Stael portrays a person who, like Minerva, is already endowed with a mature genius the moment she appears on the scene. Moreover, she describes this person not only in her intimate life, but also and primarily in the actions and words by which her quality of genius outwardly manifests itself. In a sense nothing could have been more difficult to achieve. For how is the reader to be persuaded that the character being presented to him is a genius, if this character's utterances and behavior do not carry with them something authentically brilliant? Therein reside the difficulty of such an enterprise and the reason for which, nearly every time it has been attempted, it has failed. Only a writer of genius can confer genius on a character of his own invention, and even then he can confer only the particular sort of genius that is his own. It is true that this difficulty would hardly have hampered Mme. de Stael. Brilliant herself, nothing prevented her from infusing her character with the genius she herself enjoyed. Thus Corinne is endowed with the very qualities that