만 2세반 영아의 또래관계에서 나타나는 친사회적 행동 분석

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this work is to observe prosocial behaviors of infants aged two who go to a forest child care center in peer relationship, analyze their characteristics, and thereby help to understand prosocial development in infancy and provide suggestions for educational practice. Infant care has been more expanded than ever before, and prosociality in infancy has become a significant development task. Given that, it is important to observe and analyze the characteristics of prosocial behaviors appearing in peer relationship in infancy. Therefore, this work set up the study issue of 'what are the characteristics of prosocial behaviors of two-year infants in peer relationship?', and this researcher participated into natural circumstances to observe them and studied them in ethnographic method. The study subjects of this work were 10 male infants and 9 female infants aged two in a forest child care center located in Ulsan. For three months, this researcher observed and recorded their interaction at one-hour free play time in the morning, and transcribed the recorded videos. Primarily, observation materials were analyzed in inductive method, and secondarily, on the basis of the primary analysis, the materials were analyzed in deductive method according to the category of prosocial behaviors. As a result of the analysis, infants' prosocial behaviors were sub-categorized into seven ones: helping, dividing, consoling, kindness, cooperating, sharing, and empathy. The collected materials were repeatedly read and analyzed, and for reliability and validity of this research, they were classified and perused in consideration of triangulation. And, they were qualitatively analyzed as a process of providing a series of order, system and meaning. The study results of this work are presented as follows: First, 'helping' is an altruistic behavior without any reward. Infants often wanted to give some help to friends. At this time, for friends who didn't request any help but were considered to need some help, infants made a moral decision on their own and often helped them out. Secondly, 'sharing' serves as an important role for the initial social maturity. In other words, 'sharing' is a factor to give infants a critical opportunity to experiencing prosociality. Sometimes, infants voluntarily gave their favorites something to play, but the process of asking other infants to give them something to play led infants to experiencing such prosociality as a sense of reciprocity through sharing. In addition, sharing experience caused infants to give more sensitive responses to mutual requests or interests of infants. Thirdly, when infants were aware of other infants' negative feelings or sympathized with them, they consoled other infants. For the emotional states of friendly infants, they had more interest in them, more worried them, and more consoled them. By giving more sensitive responses to friendly infants, they more frequently showed prosocial behaviors like 'consoling'. And even in conflict situations, they tried to solve the problems through the prosocial behavior. Fourthly, 'kindness' based on mutual respect and equality was observed in the types of respect and consideration of infants. It resulted from the collaborative appearance of perspective-taking ability and empathy ability among peer interaction of infants. Therefore, it was found that infants gave consideration to friendly infants. It is a prosocial behavior with a high level. Along with perspective-taking ability, empathy appeared. Many scholars tried to explain them as social phenomena of young children, but they were also found in infancy. Fifthly, unlike 'helping', 'cooperating' includes constant interaction and a common goal of infants in a state of infants' mutual intention. When infants ask for cooperation, other infants responded to the request and behaved cooperation. An expression of thankfulness served as a positive motivation of cooperating and helped to create familiarity which also helped to build friendship and helped the development of opinion exchanges. In the process, infants had a common goal and interest, and developed complex and concrete prosocial relationship. Sixthly, infants shared something to play or played together, and in the process created familiarity. In cases of 'sharing', found were simple social play and supplementary play in which infants recognize one another through cooperative play but do not make any efforts to gain any support. For friendly infants, they frequently showed prosocial behaviors. And, negative interaction was given mostly to less friendly infants. However, such familiarity easily appeared and disappeared depending on circumstances. Seventhly, 'empathy' is a process of going toward emotional consistency with others. Simulation based emotional empathy, the step of representing others' mental state, was observed. Similar experiences helped infants to feel empathy, which caused more active interaction, strengthened the unity of them, and facilitated communication. In the case of two-year infants, they showed prosocial behaviors mainly to friendly infants, and gave negative interaction like conflict to less friendly infants. This work revealed that infants gave more positive interaction to other peer infants they liked and thereby showed more prosocial behaviors to them.