2019 Volume 67 Issue 4 Pages 223-235
In order to examine elementary school students' helplessness, constituent factors were identified from published research on junior high school students' helplessness and cognitive emotional development. Elementary school students' helplessness was validated through structural equation modeling. Specifically, the present research identified emotional expressions toward guardians as a factor in elementary school students' helplessness, based on the possibility that suppression of a child's emotional expression may be a factor in depression, one that impacts emotional functioning even more than cognitive functioning. In Study 1, 3 scales were created to measure children's emotional exchanges: sending and receiving positive emotion, children's sending negative emotions, and guardians' receiving negative emotions. The trustworthiness and relevance of these scales were validated. In Study 2, a helplessness model for junior high school students' helplessness was validated by adding informational exchanges with guardians to validated variables as a constitutive factor. The results indicated that all 3 scales could possibly measure increases in children's coping efficacy and decreases in their helplessness. Additionally, the results suggested that guardians' receiving negative emotions improves children's biased thinking, resulting in reduced helplessness.
