Children's Evaluations Research Articles

Children's Evaluations of Retaliatory Aggression

Children's Evaluations of Retaliatory Aggression

An Investigation of the Relationships Between Children's Self-Concepts and Evaluations of Parent Figures: Do They Vary as a Function of Family Structure?

Abstract The present study investigated the relationship between children's self-concepts and evaluations of parent figures. The subjects were elementary school children (352 males and 280 females; Grades 5 through 10) who came from intact families, divorced families, or families in which one or both parents had died. Significant relationships were obtained between children's self-concept ratings and their evaluations of their natural father and mother for both intact and divorced families. This relationship was not significant, however, for families in which a parent had died. Furthermore, children's self-ratings were not significantly correlated with their evaluations of stepparents.

Self-System Concomitants of Discrepancies between Children's and Teachers' Evaluations of Academic Competence

The purpose of this study was to elucidate the psychological concomitants of discrepancies between fourth- to sixth-grade children's perceptions of academic competence and 2 measures of their "actual" competence in this domain: teacher ratings and achievement test scores. Over-, under-, and congruent child raters were identified on the basis of the 2 external standards and then compared on child and teacher ratings of self-esteem, self-regulatory style, and coping with perceived failure. 6 teachers and 121 lower- to upper-middle-class suburban students participated. As predicted, no differences were obtained between congruent and distorted (combined over- and under-) raters on these self-system variables. Consistent with previous research, overrating children showed higher self-esteem on self- and teacher ratings than underraters. After controlling for level of perceived competence, overraters scored higher on anxiety, and, when overrating occurred against the teacher standard, these children were rated by teachers as having lower self-esteem, poorer coping strategies, and less internalized self-regulatory styles. Comparing the 2 standards, self-reported difficulties were associated with underrating against the teacher's standard but not the achievement standard. Teacher reported difficulties were associated with the opposite pattern of underrating against the 2 standards. Motivational factors contributing to patterns of discrepancies are discussed, as are the educational implications of mismatches between teacher and student perceptions of objective and intrapsychic aspects of school experience.

Is this a good place to grow up in? Neighbourhood quality and children's evaluations

A random sample of 9–11-year-old children living in 18 suburbs of Sydney, Australia, were interviewed regarding their likes and dislikes about their neighbourhood, and their overall evaluation of their area as a “place for children to grow up in”. The 18 suburbs were selected to represent a range of scores on the Vinson-Homel risk scale, a composite index of neighbourhood quality derived from health, income, employment, education and welfare statistics that are available on an areal basis. Children's evaluations were strongly related to areal risk scores, with the two highest-risk (inner city) neighbourhoods particularly disfavoured. The major reasons advanced for liking or disliking a neighbourhood were plotted against risk scores, showing a complex pattern of associations, with parks particularly valued by children in the highest-risk areas. A canonical correlation analysis of likes, dislikes and overall ratings showed two canonical variables to be statistically significant. The first was a good-bad dimension, which was strongly associated with risk score. The second contrasted open playspace with private peace and quiet, bringing together the six highest- and lowest-risk areas in comparison to the twelve middling-risk areas. No variables other than risk were found to be predictive of children's evaluations of their neighbourhoods.

The relationship between children's drawings and preferences for alternative depictions of a familiar object

Little attention has been paid to children's evaluations of their own drawings and those of others. This study aimed to determine whether young children are satisfied with their own method of portraying a familiar object, or whether they would ideally like to draw in a more advanced way, but are hampered by production deficiencies from achieving this aim. Children aged 4 to 9 years produced drawings of a house and expressed preferences concerning an experimental series of house drawings, in which features typically found in drawings by children of different ages were systematically varied. It was found that children of all ages preferred those drawings which had most features in common with their own productions, suggesting that they are satisfied with their own drawings and may actually choose to draw in the way that they do. The conclusions of other studies using this paradigm are questioned on the grounds that they contain methodological weaknesses, particularly with respect to design of their preference stimuli.

Children's Conceptions of Parental Authority

TISAK, MARIE S. Children's Conceptions of Parental Authority. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1986, 57, 166-176. Children's conceptions of parental authority were examined. 120 children (ages 6, 8, and 10 years) were administered an interview to assess the boundaries of parental authority. Subjects were asked to make evaluations about events pertaining to the restraint of behavior and events pertaining to the enforcement or maintenance of parental rule systems. Social events that differ in content (stealing, family chores, and friendship choice) were used to examine whether there is heterogeneity in children's evaluations of the dimensions of authority. The results show that children draw boundaries to parental authority and that children's notions of authority are heterogeneous with respect to the content of the social event.

Children's evaluations of their own peer relations.

In an attempt to relate parental and child evaluations of children's peer relations, a measure of child peer relations was developed and administered to clinic families. The children's ratings reflected adequate internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity. Significant disrepancies between parental and child perceptions of peer relations emerged. It was concluded that self-report may function as a useful adjunct to other sources in the assessment of peer relations.

Discerning Functionality of Children's Support Systems through Use of the Personal History Inventory for Children

Various support systems may malfunction in children's lives. The Personal History Inventory for Children was developed to survey teachers' perceptions of the functionality of several such support systems. Reliability of the scale over 1 mo. was quite high whether the children rated were from intact families ( r = .93) or divorced families ( r = .80). Results from the first assessment of teachers were generally significantly correlated with the 156 children's evaluations of themselves and of their parents, particularly if these children were from intact families.

Children's evaluations of fathers' socialization behavior.

Children's evaluations of fathers' socialization behavior.

Children's evaluations of fathers' socialization behavior.

Children's evaluations of fathers' socialization behavior.

Social cognition and the development of rule-guided behaviour

The weak to modest relationship between cognitive measures of judgement and reasoning and children's behaviour has led to a search for more satisfactory predictors of behaviour. One proposal is to integrate cognitive-developmental theory with children's perceptions of the self and others. In this regard, cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence indicates that children's “identification” as expressed by self-reports of parents' attractiveness and similarity to the self is correlated with their rule-guided behaviour. These relationships reflect the effects of sex-typing. In a study of behaviour in a naturalistic setting, Grade 1 girls' identification with the mother was correlated with a resistance to others' ruleviolations in Grade 2. Boys' self-initiated violations in Grade 2 were correlated with father identification in Grade 3. Given that behaviour can be mediated by perceptions of parents in relation to the self, and that effective socialization may reflect perceptions of control and a willingness to obey, a study of children's evaluations of maternal discipline techniques is reported. Findings were that children of all ages prefer an authoritative parent who displays firmness and flexibility in dealing with the situation at hand. The implications for theories of social development are discussed. Bidirectional influences in parent-child relations are considered as well as age-related changes in the connection between behaviour and sources of perceived control. Processes by which perceptions of control form a basis for autonomy and responsibility are examined.

Appraisals of Intervention: The Mother's versus the Culprit's Behavior as Determinants of Children's Evaluations of Discipline Techniques

SIEGAL, MICHAEL, and COWEN, JAN. Appraisals of Intervention: The Mother's versus the Culprit's Behavior as Determinants of Children's Evaluations of Discipline Techniques. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1760-1766. 20 children in each of 5 groups (mean ages = 5-9, 8-9, 11-9, 14-7, and 17-8) were asked to evaluate the disciplinary techniques employed by mothers over a range of situations in which a culprit was described as having transgressed. Maternal child-rearing strategies consisted of induction, physical punishment, love withdrawal, and permissiveness. Across all ages, evaluations were determined by the technique employed by the mother in interaction predominantly with the type of situation, and secondarily with the nature of the child making the evaluation. As predicted, children tended to prefer the authoritative parent by expressing strong approval for induction accompanied by mild approval for physical punishment. Contrary to expectations, both preschoolers and schoolchildren generally rated induction as favorably as physical punishment. While favorable ratings of physical punishment generally declined with age, there were no age differences in evaluations of induction in some situations. The implications of children's evaluations of discipline techniques for parent-child interaction are discussed.

Appraisals of Intervention: The Mother's versus the Culprit's Behavior as Determinants of Children's Evaluations of Discipline Techniques

Appraisals of Intervention: The Mother's versus the Culprit's Behavior as Determinants of Children's Evaluations of Discipline Techniques

Factors Influencing Children's Evaluations of Aggression and Passivity

One hundred and sixty boys aged mainly between 9 and 11 years evaluated aggressive acts that were performed either to achieve the respondent's own goals (personal aggression) or to help another individual (social aggression). The personal aggressive behaviours were further classified according to whether they were designed to hurt the victim (hostile) or were exhibited to take control of property (instrumental), and according to whether the sequence was started by the aggressor (initiatory) or by the victim (reactive). Social aggression received the highest evaluations and, regardless of the intention, reactive aggression was judged significantly higher than initiatory aggression. Ninety six of the pupils rated a person who remained passive in situations providing opportunities for social, reactive instrumental and reactive hostile aggression. Failure to participate in social aggression was viewed with more disfavour than the other types of passivity. Judgements of aggression and passivity were positively associated with anticipations of paternal responses. Social class differences in evaluations were more evident for passivity than for aggression, and several explanations are offered for this finding.

The social-psychological significance of bilingual code switching for children

ABSTRACTThe purpose of the research was to examine children's evaluative reactions to bilingual code switching during a dyadic cross-cultural encounter. Children's reactions to code switching were elicited using a segmented dialogue technique whereby they listened to and judged each of an integrated series of speech turns one at a time in their order of occurrence. The speakers were played by English and French Canadian actors and were depicted in the roles of a salesman and a customer. English and French Canadian children were subjects. It was found that the children's evaluations of the speaker's language choices were influenced by (a) situational norms associated with appropriate salesman and customer behaviours; (b) interpersonal accommodation; and (c) ingroup favouritism, but not by sociocultural status differences between French and English. Moreover, their reactions were dynamic in that they depended upon mutual language choices by both actors and the basis of their evaluations changed from the beginning to the end of the dialogue sequence. The findings are discussed with respect to results from other developmental research using simpler elicitation techniques as well as to findings from adolescent and adult respondents.

Differences in school psychological report writing as a function of doctoral vs. nondoctoral training

This study was designed to examine differences in the report-writing skills of doctoral and nondoctoral school psychologists. Fourteen doctoral level and 13 specialist level public school psychologists provided the 50 school psychological reports used in this study; 25 reports were written by doctoral level school psychologists and 25 were written by specialist level school psychologists. The reports were categorized according to the referral problem: mental retardation, learning disability, reading problem, emotional difficulty, and behavior problem. The psychological reports were rated by a panel of educators using an 18-item rating scale. The results indicated no significant differences between the ratings of the doctoral and nondoctoral school psychologists' reports. Educators did, however, consistently rate reports that analyzed mentally retarded children's evaluations better than any of the other four report categories, regardless of the degree level of the school psychologist. Results indicated that both specialist level and doctoral level school psychologists are capable of meeting the needs of educators in the area of report writing.

Children's Evaluations of Aggressive, Assertive, and Submissive Responses

Children's Evaluations of Aggressive, Assertive, and Submissive Responses

Children's evaluations of aggressive, assertive, and submissive responses

In this study, 231 fourth‐sixth grade children were asked to judge aggressive, assertive, and submissive solutions to interpersonal conflict situations along “evaluative”; and “potency”; dimensions, and to assess the consequences of such behaviors for themselves and for others. Significant differences were obtained between boys and girls, and among children designated “highly aggressive,”; “highly assertive,”; and “highly submissive.”; In contrast to the great disparity between the judgments of aggressive and assertive children, assertive and submissive children differed significantly only in their ratings of assertive alternatives on particular “evaluative”; dimensions (i.e., “good‐bad,”; “wise‐foolish,”; “kind‐cruel). Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

The effects of language of testing on bilingual pre‐adolescents’ attitudes towards welsh and varieties of English

Abstract This study, using the matched‐guise technique, was designed (a) to determine how West Welsh pre‐adolescents would react to Welsh speakers reading a passage of prose in one or other of three language varieties (R.P. English [EE] vs. Welsh‐accented English [EW] vs. Welsh [WW]), and (b) to examine what effect language of testing (English vs. Welsh) might have on children's social evaluations of speech styles. The results showed that EW was judged less good and more snobbish than WW while the former was rated as less strong than EE; no differences accrued between EE and WW. Two interaction effects emerged showing that differences arose in the way subjects evaluated EW depending on the language of testing. He was rated as more selfish than either EE or WW when the language of instructions and the scales were in Welsh and less intelligent than both of them when the testing situation was in English. The results are discussed in relation to previous matched‐guise research in Wales and their methodologica...

Separable effects of motives, consequences, and presentation order on children's moral judgments.

The effects of the order of presentation of motive and consequence information on the moral judgments of kindergarten,, second-, and fifth-grade children were examined. Information type (motives vs. consequences) was varied factorially with presentation position (first vs. second) allowing application of recent models of source credibility. Recency effects were obtained at all three ages. Since subjects were required to repeat each story prior to judgment, verbatim memory is unlikely to be the sole cause of recency. The results also showed a developmental shift in the weights of motives and consequences. For fifth graders, evidence suggested that the weight of motives was larger than the weight of consequences, whereas for kindergartners the weight of consequences was larger than the weight of motives. These conclusions do not depend on the assumption that the scale values are developmental^ static, a necessary assumption in previous research. Following Piaget's (1965) suggestion of a developmental progression from use of consequences toward the use of motives in making moral judgments, work on children's evaluations of the deeds of others first focused on finding the age at which children are capable of considering the motives of