Success in early childhood requires fluent cognitive control functioning and the ability to select and execute effective regulatory strategies across many new contexts including academics and social interactions. Cognitive control functioning has been positively linked to a host of important short- and long-term outcomes across many diverse domains. A wealth of research on self-efficacy, self-concept, and implicit theories of cognitive processes demonstrates that individuals’ self-perceptions of ability and cognition substantially influence important behavioral outcomes, namely academic performance. Investigations into the mechanisms underlying these links suggest that self-perceptions of abilities impact academic outcomes by differentially influencing the self-regulated learning behaviors that individuals choose to engage. Despite this knowledge, and evidence suggesting that capturing such self-perceptions from young children is highly plausible, the extent to which young children can reflect and report on their own cognitive control abilities has not been investigated. In this dissertation, I develop and validate an interview scale that aims to probe children’s self-perceptions of their cognitive control abilities using the Berkeley Puppet Interview administration format. Scale analyses of interviews from 125 children aged 4- through 7-years suggest the scale elicits responses that cluster around two correlated, but separable components: Self- and Emotion-Regulation and Attention Modulation. Responses on these two subscales were reliable, showing moderate to strong internal consistency. Subscale scores were strongly correlated with parent reports of similar skills, and self-reports of related constructs, but showed no such relations with behavioral tasks measuring executive functioning abilities. The findings suggest that young children are capable of reflecting and reporting on their own cognitive control skills, and that these skills correspond to parent reports of similar abilities. Further scale refinement and targeted validation efforts are called for; however, these encouraging early results suggest the new scale holds potential to play a key role in uncovering ways in which children’s self-perceptions influence their learning success.

The widespread practice of non-suicidal self-injury suggests that it might no longer be reasonable to frame such behaviours as individual pathologies and highlights the need to understand such acts as sociological phenomena instead. This dissertation therefore explored the core elements of self-injury such as the self, the body, and meanings ascribed to acts of injuring the self/body, in relation to forms of sociation. Focusing on intent and aetiology, this qualitative enquiry used an interpretive mode of explanation, and collected data via indepth face-to-face interviews from a characteristically diverse community sample of fifteen participants. Findings indicated that respondents' aetiologies of self-injury were located in social interactions characterised by abuse, neglect, bullying, and invalidation. Individuals who perceived themselves as worthless and unlovable objects punished themselves, or branded themselves as failures. Paradoxically, sufficient castigation averted the complete annihilation of the existential self. Findings concur with previous studies which reported that, at its deepest level, self-injury is antithetical to suicide. This study also highlighted the body's communicative role in the symbolic expression of traumatic experiences, and emphasised its physiological role in (a) emotion regulation and (b) self-injury's propensity to become addictive. From a sociological perspective, instant emotion regulation via self-injury allowed individuals to avoid social stigma; well managed social performances in turn protected social bonds. Although self-injury constitutes a maladaptive coping mechanism, its reported physiological, psychological and social gains are significant and need to be considered in intervention programmes and policy. This dissertation therefore makes two recommendations: firstly, restorative practices should be reinstituted, particularly in schools; secondly, the growing and alarming trend of copycat behaviours reported in children and young teens needs to be researched further in relation to the mediation, ideation and imitation of self-injurious behaviours.

This thesis presents a series of cross-cultural experiments, which investigate the role of self-awareness on self-disclosure in computer-mediated communication (CMC). The thesis is split into two parts, detailing the results of four separate experiments. In Part 1, the two experiments focus specifically on British participants who are considered to be from an individualistic culture. Experiment 1 investigates how private and public self-awareness affects their breadth, depth and accuracy of self-disclosure in CMC. Experiment 2 then attempts to simplify Experiment 1 to try and focus more specifically on personal motivations of self-disclosure. The results of the first two experiments clearly illustrate the importance of both private and public self-awareness in intimate self-disclosure in CMC. More specifically, they indicate that increasing private self-awareness increases depth of self-disclosure, whilst increasing public self-awareness reduces the accuracy of the self-disclosure. In Part 2 of the thesis Experiments 1 and 2 are replicated on Singaporean participants, who are considered to be from a collectivist culture. Members of collectivist cultures are consistently reported to self-disclose less than members of individualistic cultures. It is however found in Experiment 3 that in a typical 'real-time' interaction the Singaporeans report themselves to self-disclose to a greater depth than the British participants. Cultural differences are also found in the participants' reactions to certain manipulations of self-awareness. More specifically, a manipulation that increases public self-awareness greatly reduces the British participants' self-disclosure. Whilst the Singaporeans are more affected by a manipulation that increases their private self-awareness, which greatly increases their depth of self-disclosure. It is concluded that there are cultural differences in the way that people react to manipulations of self-awareness in CMC and this raises philosophical discussion about how culture drives self-disclosure which, in turn, drives the pursuit of self-knowledge, and ultimately the construction of the cultural self. Finally it is concluded that CMC may allow an exploration of the self outside of cultural norms, and that this could potentially change the boundaries of the private and public self in the future.

Undergraduate male and female students enrolled in an introductory behavior analysis course with minimal instruction on self-management were given modified exploratory logs to use in a self-management project. Students self-monitored behavior via the log, constructed their own interventions, and reported changes in behavior and extent of success in a write up at course end. Changes in self-reported descriptions in the logs as well as the written results of a pre and post survey of emotional responses were counted. Successful self-management project interventions were reported by most students. Correspondence between planned and actual events increased. Negative reinforcement procedures characterized most students' intervention. Correspondence between events at pre and post and actual log reports was highest at post.

Self-esteem and measurement thereof is a very prominent phenomenon in psychology and related fields of study. In contrast to traditional measures of selfesteem which focus on individual self-esteem, Luhtanen and Crocker (1992) developed a measure of Collective self-esteem (CSE) with the following subscales: membership self-esteem, private collective self-esteem, public collective self-esteem and importance to identity. The aim of this study was to determine if the instrument is a valid measurement of collective self-esteem in the South African context. The CSE was evaluated using item analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. According to the findings of this study the Collective Self Esteem Scale is a reliable instrument for South African use, but confirmatory factor analysis determined that it is not factorially valid. The fit indexes indicate that the theorized four-factor model is not a good fit to the data in the South African context and should pave the way for further research on the construct validity of the Collective Self esteem Scale. Copyright 2010, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Rossouw, A 2010, Confirmatory factor analysis of the collective self esteem scale, MCom dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-02212012-122435 / > C12/4/134/gm / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

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Yes / The concept of the self and its relation to moral action is complex and subject to varying interpretations, not only between different academic disciplines but also across time and space. This paper presents empirical evidence from a cross-cultural study on the Buddhist and Confucian notions of self in SMEs in Vietnam and Taiwan. The study employs Hwang’s Mandala Model of the Self, and its extension into Shiah’s non-self-model, to interpret how these two Eastern philosophical representations of the self, the Confucian relational self and Buddhist non-self, can lead to moral action. By demonstrating the strengths of the model, emphasizing how social and cultural influences constrain the individual self and promote the social person leading to moral action, the paper extends understanding of the self with empirical evidence of the mechanisms involved in organizational contexts

<p><p>Självkänsla är något vi ständigt bär med oss och den inverkar på vårt agerande samt våra val i livet. Johnson (2003) delar in självkänslan i två delar den inre och yttre, vilka kan kombineras till fyra personligheter. Forskning har visat att självkänslan samvarierar med tendensen till att bruka self-handicapping. Self-handicapping innebär att människan skapar hinder för sig själv påhittade eller verkliga. Etthundrasju studenter fyllde i en enkät bestående av 58 påståenden, vilken mätte inre, yttre självkänsla samt self-handicapping. Deltagarna delades sedermera in i de fyra personligheterna, vilka ställdes mot dess uppmätta tendens till att bruka self-handicapping. Resultatet visade att låg inre och/eller hög yttre självkänsla ökar benägenheten till att använda self-handicapping. Avslutningsvis diskuteras och jämförs resultatets utfall.  </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p></p><p> </p>