Children's Recall of Social Behavioral Information about Others

타인의 사회적 행동정보에 따른 아동의 회상 발달

The purpose of the present study was to examine age differences in children's recall for information about aggression, prosociability, and social withdrawal of others and to investigate the impact of likeability on children's recall for social behavioral information. The subjects were 160 children, 20 boys and 20 girls each at 6, 8, 10, and 12 years of age. The subjects listened to descriptions of the social behavior of a hypothetical boy and girl and subsequently reported their recollections. These descriptions were drawn from Bukowski's(1990) stydy, the Pupil Evaluation Inventory, and the Pittsburgh Adjustment Scales. The data were analyzed with 2-way ANOVA, paired T-test, and correlation. Differences across the age levels were found in the number of behaviors correctly recalled for the behavioral descriptions of aggression, prosociability, and social withdrawal. Descriptions of aggressive behavior was recalled more when children listened to a hypothetical boy than to a hypothetical girl. Additional analyses revealed that at 6 years of age, children recalled more descriptions of aggressive and prosocial behavior than of withdrawal and at 10 and 12 years of age, children recalled more descriptions of withdrawal behavior than of aggressive and prosocial behaviors. The more negative the children's affective evaluations of the withdrawal behavior, the better they recalled the withdrawal behavior.