Reconsidering the scribbling stage of drawing: A new perspective on toddlers' representational processes

Although the scribbling stage of drawing has been historically regarded as meaningless and transitional, a sort of prelude to the actual drawing phase of childhood, recent studies have begun to re-evaluate this important moment of a child's development and find meaning in what was once considered mere motor activity and nothing more. The present study analyzes scribbling in all its subphases and discovers a clear intention behind young children's gestures. From expressing the dynamic qualities of an object and the child's relationship with it, to gradually reducing itself to a simple contour of a content no more alive on the paper, but only in the child's own imagination, we trace the evolution of the line as a tool that toddlers use to communicate feelings and intentions to the world that surrounds them. We will provide a selected number of graphical examples that are representative of our theory. These drawings (13 in total) were extracted from a much wider sample derived from our studies on children's graphical-pictorial abilities, conducted on children aged 0 to 3 years in various Italian nurseries. Our results appear to indicate that scribbling evolves through a series of stages, and that early graphical activity in children is sparked and maintained by their relationship with their caregivers and the desire to communicate with them

Early Adolescents’ Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties, Student–Teacher Relationships, and Motivation to Defend in Bullying Incidents

Background: School bullying is a widespread phenomenon across the world, which involves bystanders who take on various roles. Motivation to defend victims is important to investigate because it helps us devise better, evidence-based, anti-bullying interventions. Objective: We aimed to determine whether students’ behavioral and emotional strengths and difficulties and student–teacher relationships were associated with different types of motivation to defend victims of bullying. The hypotheses were (1) emotional and behavioral difficulties will be associated with less autonomous and introjected motivation to defend and greater extrinsic motivation to defend and (2) close student–teacher relationships will be associated with greater autonomous motivation to defend, and less extrinsic motivation to defend. Method: Data were collected from 483 Swedish early adolescents who completed a survey in their classrooms. Results: Results showed that, among boys and girls, close student–teacher relationships were positively associated with autonomous motivation and negatively associated with extrinsic motivation to defend, while negative expectations concerning teachers were associated with all forms of motivation to defend. Emotional and behavioral difficulties were only associated with introjected motivation to defend among girls. Furthermore, extrinsic motivation to defend was associated with the interactions between individual differences in behavioral and emotional difficulties and negative expectations. Conclusions: Adolescents who are more occupied with wanting to have a better relationship with their teachers might be motivated to be involved in good social relationships with others. The results also indicate that closeness in student–teacher relationships is important for greater autonomous motivation to defend victims during bullying

Direct bullying and cyber Bullying: Experimental study of bystanders’ motivation to defend victims and the role of anxiety and identification with the bully

School bullying among young adolescents is a globally pervasive problem, but is less common when bystanders are motivated to defend victims. Thus, the focus of this experimental study is on motivation to defend victims of bullying. Methods: 388 students (Mage = 12.22 years, 49.7% girls) from two Turkish public schools (5th to 8th grade) participated in a vignette experiment. Students were randomized to one of two vignettes (direct vs. cyber bullying). Self-report measures of motivation to defend, trait anxiety, depression, and identification with the victim or bully were used. Results: Participants reported more autonomous motivation in the cyber bullying condition, while those who witnessed direct bullying reported higher anxiety and depression.Results also revealed that type of condition was associated with anxiety and depression, while anxiety was associated with autonomous motivation to defend. Finally, participants in the direct bullying condition were more likely to identify with the bully. Conclusions: Findings advance our understanding of when and why adolescents are motivated to help victims of bullying because they give a richer picture of what they assess when deciding whether or not they should intervene