Yuichi Toda

How Help-Seeking Expectations Are Associated with Relational and Physical Victimization among Japanese Adolescents

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between help-seeking expectations and school bullying. Japanese students (N = 532; 53% boys, about 12 years-old) were asked to fill out a questionnaire including help-seeking expectations scale and bullying scale. Help-seeking expectations were composed of two kinds of expectations; responsibility expectations and accessibility expectations. Relational victimization on girls was positively associated with help-seeking in both responsibility and accessibility expectations. Higher relational victimization was associated with higher responsibility expectations for girls. For boys, there was a u-shaped relationship between relational victimization and responsibility expectations. There was a reversed u-shaped relationship between relational victimization and accessibility expectations. In sum, much more relationally victimized boys may expect their friends’ help (responsibility expectations), but their accessibility expectations may be rather pessimistic.

Variations of perspectives of junior high school students who have participated in Smartphone Summit for appropriate usage of the Internet and smartphones

Abstract This study investigated the variations of perspectives of junior high school students who had participated in Smartphone Summit for appropriate usage of the Internet and smartphones. Smartphone Summit is an educational project designed to empower junior high school students to advocate appropriate usage of the Internet and smartphones among older, same-age, and younger peers, within school communities and society as a whole. The participants were 26 students (7th and 8th grade) from 18 junior high schools in Okayama, a western Japanese city. In the project, the participants discussed pros and cons of the Internet and smartphones, and presented their ideas concerning possible activities to encourage their classmates to use the Internet and smartphones in appropriate ways with the help of various adult experts. A questionnaire was administered to measure the participants’ evaluation of their own and their classmates’ present smartphone usage as well as anticipated future smartphone usage. Results showed that the participants evaluated their own usage as more appropriate than that of their classmates and expected that future usage would be better for both themselves and their classmates than at present. Furthermore, the participants expected their classmates’ usage will change more significantly than their own because their classmates’ current usage seems relatively inappropriate and there would be larger room for improvement. From the analysis of patterns of participants’ impact expectation toward their peers, it was found that there were three types of perspectives: moderate, relatively lower, and relatively higher evaluation. Future research should focus on the factors influencing the participants’ perspectives.

Young children’s fairness judgements on the distribution of rewards and responsibilities: allocation patterns and consistencies across two kinds of distribution

ABSTRACT The present study examined whether young children demonstrated consistencies in their allocation patterns across distributions of positive and negative resources. Preschool children from younger (age 4–5) and elder (age 5–6) classrooms were asked to allocate rewards when one person contributed more than the other and to allocate the responsibility of cleaning up the toys when only one person enjoyed the benefit of playing. By presenting two conditions for each distribution (the person who contributed more or enjoyed the benefit was the participant in one situation and the peer in the other), four allocation types (equity, equality, selfish, and generous) were identified. Children in both groups showed generous patterns in both distributions, but the differences for age were not significant. Despite more elder children applied the same rules to both distributions compared to the younger children, no age difference was found. These findings indicate key implications and scope for future research.