Middle Childhood Development Of Children's Prosocial Behavior And Internalized Problem Behavior

Prosocial behavior has been an important theme of research since Eisenberg initiated the research of this field and has been extensively studied by psychological researchers, the results of which were fruitful. Although the large amount of research literature has shed much light on the age and gender difference of prosocial behavior, there are several important issues that need further clarifications and investigations, including the individual differences not only in the average level but also in the developmental pattern of prosocial behavior and the gender differences in the average level. Especially in recent years, the relation between prosocial behavior and internalizing behavior has been profoundly promoted on the basis of the conclusion of the relation between prosocial behavior and externalizing behavior. Giving a careful scrutiny to the multitudinous researches of this field, it can be found that most of the conclusions were drown in virtue of cross- sectional researches. Longitudinal studies were seldom taken into account. Nowadays, exploring the development of prosocial behavior as well as the relation between prosocial behavior and internalizing behavior systematically and dynamically is the latest trend and represents the researches of the state of the art.The present study used a sample of 721 children from 14 schools in Jinan City, Shandong Province, whose mothers and teachers were also involved in the study.They were surveyed yearly to examine the longitudinal associations. The data includes prosocial scores of children and scores of internalizing behaviors of three sorts. Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) and cross- lagged regression were conducted to analyse the development of prosocial behavior and its relation with internalizing behaviors respectively. The main findings of the study were as follows:1. The four types of prosocial behavior namely help, comfort, sharing and cooperation can represent children's prosocial behavior perfectly and these four types of prosocial behavior happen coherently.2. In the group level, children's prosocial behavior increased dramatically from T1 (2006) to T3 (2008), however, there were individual differences in the development of prosocial behavior. Not all children's prosocial behavior increased and the rapidity of development showed much obvious variations in development courses.3. Remarkable gender differences emerged in children's prosocial behavior. Girls showed higher level of prosociality than boys consisitently from age 9 to age 11. Such gender differences in prosocial behavior also existed in terms of the rapidity of prosocial behavior. Concretely speeking, boys and girls have the same rapidity in the development of prosocial behavior.4. The developmental rapidity of prosocial behavior in middle childhood is influenced by children's initial level of prosocial behavior. That is to say, children whose initial level of prosocial behavior is high have a slower developmental rapidity relatively. At the same time, children who have a low level of prosocial behavior have a high level of developmental rapidity.5. Other variables controlled, children's prosocial behavior surveyed in 2006 can predict children's internalizing behaviors such as depression and loneliness, and vice versa.6. For boys, prosocial behavior in 2006 can't predict withdrawn in 2008 but withdrawn in 2006 can predict prosocial behavior significantly in 2008. For girls, prosocial behavior in 2006 can predict withdrawn in 2008 but this result isn't available if we use withdrawn in 2008 to predict prosocial behavior in 2006.