Integrating relationship constructs and emotional experience into false belief tasks in preschool children

Themes of separation from attachment figures are involved when caregivers are integrated into standard theory of mind tasks in which objects or toys are located. Two experiments test the hypothesis that searching for a caregiver would interfere with false belief performance and be related to a child's emotional awareness. Experiment 1 consisted of a cross-sectional study of three- to five-year-old children administered false belief tasks related to object identity, object location, and caregiver location, i.e., false belief tasks where story characters became separated from a parent and had to locate them. As expected, there were age-related improvements in false belief performance to above-chance levels during object identity and object location tasks, but performance on the caregiver location tasks showed no age-related improvement and at age five was poorer than other tasks. Emotional integration also varied with task. Children who were relatively more aware of emotions were more likely to pass tasks involving objects, and queries of emotions during tasks were related to false beliefs about objects but not caregivers. A second study of children five years of age indicated that it was not caregivers per se that disrupted their performance on false belief tasks. Additional tasks showed that this finding was due to caregivers being animate "behaving" objects whose relocation had been self- as opposed to other-directed, which suggests that false belief performance was related to the intent of the sought item. The developing awareness of the minds of others in five-year-olds and emotional content of the task may interfere with performance in false belief tasks that are social.     

Impact of parental discipline methods on the child's internalization of values: A reconceptualization of current points of view.

It is generally argued that parental use of specific discipline techniques (e.g., reasoning vs power assertion) differentially affects a child's internalization. This article offers an expanded formulation. Internalization as a result of discipline is proposed to be based on a child's accurate perception of the parental message and acceptance or rejection of it. Mechanisms promoting acceptance are perceptions of the parent's actions as appropriate, motivation to accept the parental position, and perception that a value has been self-generated. Features of the misdeed, discipline technique, child, and parent that affect accurate perception and acceptance–rejection are outlined. Other goals besides internalization, such as movement beyond the parent's position, maintenance of the child's self-esteem, and maintenance of the parent–child relationship, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From children's hands to adults' ears: Gesture's role in the learning process.

Children can express thoughts in gesture that they do not express in speech--they produce gesture-speech mismatches. Moreover, children who produce mismatches on a given task are particularly ready to learn that task. Gesture, then, is a tool that researchers can use to predict who will profit from instruction. But is gesture also useful to adults who must decide how to instruct a particular child? We asked 8 adults to instruct 38 third- and fourth-grade children individually in a math problem. We found that the adults offered more variable instruction to children who produced mismatches than to children who produced no mismatches--more different types of instructional strategies and more instructions that contained two different strategies, one in speech and the other in gesture. The children thus appeared to be shaping their own learning environments just by moving their hands. Gesture not only reflects a child's understanding but can play a role in eliciting input that could shape that understanding. As such, it may be part of the mechanism of cognitive change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Helping the noncompliant child: Family-based treatment for oppositional behavior (2nd ed.).

Reviews the book, Helping the noncompliant child: Family-based treatment for oppositional behavior (2nd ed.) by R. J. McMahon and R. L. Forehand (see record 2004-00004-000). Positive outcomes of parent training programs have been well documented in the literature (Lonigan, Elbert, & Johnson, 1998). These programs are often recommended for young children exhibiting disruptive behaviors (Kazdin, 1997). The efficacy of parent training programs for families who are able to complete treatment is documented for both short-term and long-term goals (Brestan & Eyberg, 1998; Lonigan et al., 1998). Helping the Noncompliant Child: Family-Based Treatment for Oppositional Behavior is the second edition of a successful parent training program that promises to deliver results similar to those of the earlier program. In their book, McMahon and Forehand present an intervention treatment program designed for children ages 3 to 8 years who present as "excessively noncompliant." The treatment program is based on the premise that "the child's noncompliant, inappropriate behavior is shaped and maintained through maladaptive patterns of family interaction, which reinforce coercive behaviors" (p. 28). McMahon and Forehand's HNC program provides parents with a specific and practical way to get out of the coercive cycle of negative interactions by using attention and rewards, ignoring negative behaviors, and giving clear instructions. The program falls short when it uses essentially the same time-out procedure for noncompliance for children between the ages of 3 and 8 and regardless of the function or reason for the noncompliance. To intervene effectively with a child, all of the issues at hand must be taken into consideration. In severe cases, the time-out procedure recommended could actually increase conflict between the parent and the child should the child not comply, resulting in family drop out or the need to modify the adjunctive individual therapies. Preparing parents for these exceptions and possible need for modifying the program by clarifying the populations who have been successful and unsuccessful in parent training programs would be a good addition to the book. This book can only be recommended for use with families for whom a thorough evaluation has determined that the child's noncompliant behaviors are a function of coercive family interactions consisting of unclear parenting messages. The child must evidence the ability to participate effectively in the time-out procedure. The child and family must clearly fit into the population shown to benefit from parent training programs. For these families, the HNC program may decrease noncompliant behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parent prediction of children's self-concepts.

Parents of 140 normal and 97 disturbed 8-14 yr. olds brought to a clinic predicted their child's responses to the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale. Clinic children had slightly but significantly lower scores on the scale, but parents differed greatly, with normal parents overestimating and clinic mothers underestimating their child's self-esteem. While percent agreement scores showed no significant differences except in favor of mother-father agreement, it was found that normal parents agreed with their child better on positive responses, and clinic parents (especially mothers) agreed better on negative responses. It is suggested that parent attitudes may be the most significant factor separating the 2 groups, and that satisfaction with the child, rather than just awareness of his feelings, may be the more crucial issue in the perception of him as needing or not needing professional help. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Boy and Two Mothers: New Variations on an Old Theme or a New Story of Triangulation? Beginning Thoughts on the Psychosexual Development of Children in Nontraditional Families.

The author examines the ways in which a psychoanalytic perspective may illuminate the underlying developmental dynamics of children of lesbian parents. Families headed by gay and lesbian parents demand reconsideration of a theory of oedipal development based on heterosexual parents. If triangulation, the move from dyadic to triadic object relationships, depends on 2 primary processes--the child's acceptance of the immutability of generations and the child's recognition that children are excluded from the world of adult sexuality--parental gender or sexual orientation assumes less importance. The emergence of conscience from multifaceted processes of identification is consistent with this view of triangulation as a developmental phase. Children of gay and lesbian parents must be offered theories of healthy development that include them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longer-term adjustment in children of divorce: Converging findings and implications for practice.

Reviews research on the impact of divorce on the long-term adjustment of children and adolescents. Variables associated with postdivorce outcomes include conflict, the adjustment of the custodial parent, the relationship with the noncustodial parent, child-rearing practices and child care, remarriage, and the type of custody arrangement. It is suggested that a balanced relationship with each parent that incorporates relevant aspects of the child's life should be developed after divorce. Parents should understand that it is the conditions created by divorce rather than divorce itself that determine their child's adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Childhood origins of psychopathology.

Discusses family interaction and genetic influences on the development of psychopathology in childhood. Mounting evidence suggests that genetic factors significantly influence most personality traits, most forms of psychopathology, and sex differences in the prevalence of psychopathology. The sex and temperamental characteristics of children affect parent–child interaction as does the strength of the allegiance pressures emanating from a mother and father locked in hostile conflict. Children who are opposite to the sex of the more powerful parent experience the greatest allegiance conflict and consequent psychopathology. Also moderating the pathogenic effects of parental conflict are consistency of parental love and the ruthlessness of efforts to win the child's allegiance. The practical implications of these views are discussed. (3l ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using the Marschak Interaction Method Rating System for Chinese families: Relationship between parent-child interaction pattern and child's social behavior.

This study investigated the use of the Marschak Interaction Method Rating System (MIMRS) in assessing parent–child interaction patterns and its relationship with preschool children's social behavior in a Chinese sample. Fifty-two preschoolers and their parents (either mother or father) participated in the study. The MIMRS demonstrated moderate to high internal consistency. There was also a moderate positive correlation between the MIMRS and the Kinship Centre Attachment Questionnaire (Kappenberg & Halpern, 2006). With reference to parent–child interaction and the child's social behavior, a negative relationship was identified between child anger/aggressive behavior and parent's nurturing toward his or her child. In addition, a child's demonstration of exploratory behavior, reciprocity with parent, and regulatory capacities were positively related to that child's social competence and negatively related to the child's anger/aggressive behavior. The practical uses of the MIMRS as a screening tool for working with parents and children in a non-Western culture are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Object constancy: The illusion of being seen.

Recent theoretical advances in the concept of object constancy have placed it in the context of the child's establishing a separate identity. Although these advances were partly the result of examining the child's growing abilities to evoke a mental image of the absent mother, constancy cannot be well understood as a type of mental representation. It more resembles an illusion, specifically the illusion that the mother is constantly available in her mirroring function. The child's sense of his or her own reality is born in the mother's affectively attuned mirroring, as nothing about the child is real for the child until first seen by the mother. The illusion of the constant object allows the child to construct a sense of his or her own separate reality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Informativeness of child and parent reports on substance use disorders in a sample of ADHD probands, control probands, and their siblings

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate parent-child agreement on psychoactive substance use disorder (PSUD) reporting among children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and to test whether agreement level could be predicted from measures of parent and child psychopathology and substance use severity. METHOD: The authors examined 348 pairs of child and parent assessments in a sample of 108 ADHD and 68 normal control probands and their 172 siblings aged 12 and older. RESULTS: PSUD rates were higher when the child was the reporter than when the parent was. Agreement between parent and child reports was strongest for cigarette smoking, alcohol dependence, and any PSUD. Although parental reports were frequently endorsed by the child's report, the reverse was rarely true. Predictors of parental awareness of the child's PSUD included impaired social functioning, younger age of the child, presence of multiple substance use disorders in the child, and comorbid bipolar disorder. CONCLUSIONS: PSUD rates vary by informant and are higher when the child is the reporter. Because severity of PSUD and multiple substance use were the strongest predictors of parental awareness, more efforts are needed to identify the more covert and milder cases of PSUD that may not reach clinical attention.     

Psychological evaluation of clinical disturbance in children at risk for psychopathology.

Evaluated children of 1 schizophrenic or 1 manic-depressive parent for clinical disturbance in the St. Louis risk research project between 1967 and 1971. The investigation employed a psychological battery using the WISC or WAIS, figure drawings, the TAT, the Rorschach, and the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Form Sequence, plus blind clinical disturbance ratings from the test batteries. Tests were administered individually to 339 6–20 yr old children from intact families with 1 schizophrenic, manic-depressive, or physically ill parent, or 2 normal parents. Children of psychiatrically ill parents were found to be more disturbed than children of nonpsychotic parents. Children with a schizophrenic parent demonstrated peformance on psychometric evaluation that was in some ways continuous with that of adult schizophrenics. Children of schizophrenic and manic-depressive parents differed from one another and from controls on 2 measures. In the aggressive content of their TAT stories, children with a schizophrenic parent showed less aggression than normals, and children with a manic-depressive parent showed more aggression than normals. On the Rorschach, children of schizophrenics gave more primitive responses than children of manic-depressives, and the children of normal parents gave an intermediate number of such responses. (2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children As Subjects in Psychological Research.

Comment on children as subjects in psychological research. I should merely like to point out that psychologists must regularly concern themselves with the possible implications of many of our common experimental procedures. We must be aware not only of the obvious effects of frustration, of our responsibility for "picking up the pieces"--even for searching for the pieces--but we must try to envisage what it does to a child's view of adults, his attitudes toward teachers, etc. to be subjected to some of the rewards or some of the "praise and reproof" of our learning experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship of asthma severity and psychological problems in children

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether physiological severity of asthma is associated with increased psychological symptoms in children. METHOD: Participants were 337 children, aged 7 to 19 years (mean 11.9, SE 0.13), and a parent of each child. Children's asthma severity was rated by experienced pediatric asthma specialists using current guidelines from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Children filled out the Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale and the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory. Parents reported on their child's medical history, completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) about their child, and completed the Pennebaker Inventory of Linguid Languidness as a measure of their own physical symptoms. RESULTS: Child-rated anxiety symptoms were unrelated to asthma severity or to markers of asthma functional morbidity. Parental ratings of internalizing symptoms in their children were related to severity. Parent physical symptoms explained 10.2% of the variance in CBCL Internalizing symptoms, and asthma severity added an additional 6.7% to the variance. CONCLUSIONS: Asthma severity may be a more salient stressor to parents, who in turn report higher levels of child internalizing symptoms for children with severe asthma, than to children themselves. Contrary to prior hypotheses, children with severe asthma did not rate themselves as having higher levels of anxiety than those with mild or moderate asthma or than standardized norms.     

A chain of cognitive changes with learning to program in Logo.

Investigated 3 kinds of changes that could occur when a child learns to program in Logo: changes in the child's knowledge of the specific features of the Logo language, changes in the child's thinking within the domain of programming, and changes in the child's thinking in domains beyond programming. Novice programmers for 4th-grade classes were given three sessions of Logo learning, with a Logo test given after each session, and a test of spatial cognition given before and after learning. Children showed a general increase in their knowledge of Logo across the three sessions, as indicated by increasing proportions of correct answers on the Logo test. Children showed a reduction in their misconceptions related to Logo, namely, egocentric bugs such as thinking "turn right" means to turn to the right side of the screen rather than to the turtle's right, and interpretation bugs such as thinking "turn right" means to turn and then keep moving. Children who lost their egocentric misconceptions or who never had them showed pretest-to-posttest gains on a test of spatial cognition, whereas egocentric children did not. Results provide some preliminary evidence that productive learning of a programming language involves a chain of cognitive changes, with lower-level changes facilitating higher-level changes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Child and family coping one year after mediated and litigated child custody disputes.

Evaluated child and family outcomes 1 yr after parents had used mediation (n?=?32) or litigation (n?=?26) to settle custody disputes over children aged 2–17 yrs. One year after settlement, parents in mediation showed greater correspondence in perceptions of the settlement process and of their child's problems. Contrary to expectations, there was a greater association between parent and child problems among families in mediation. Child outcomes did not differ in the mediation and litigation groups but did differ according to the level of parental conflict. Custody settlements that promote ongoing contact between parents after divorce may offer both rewards and risks. Children can benefit when the parents' relationship is cooperative, but may suffer when the parents continue to fight. More intensive intervention may be needed to help parents maintain generational boundaries and shelter their children from conflict after divorce. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal resolution of child diagnosis: Stability and relations with child attachment across the toddler to preschooler transition.

In this longitudinal study, the authors investigated individual differences in how families adapt to a child's congenital disorder. Family impact, maternal grief resolution, and child attachment were assessed among 74 mothers and their toddlers with a neurological disorder or disfigurement. Fifty dyads were reevaluated 16 months later. For children with neurological compared with disfigurement diagnoses, there was a greater likelihood of negative impact on family, unresolved maternal grief, and insecure attachment at Time 1. Children classified as secure were significantly more likely to have mothers classified as resolved regarding their reactions to their children's diagnosis. Maternal grief resolution was significantly stable (77%) over time and mediated the relation between type of diagnosis and child security. With time, negative impact of child condition on the family decreased and percentage of children classified as secure increased, suggesting that on average families improved. Results suggest that helping parents come to terms emotionally and cognitively with their child's condition may be a useful focus for intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hope and Guidance for Parents of Children with OCD: A Review of Freeing Your Child from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Reviews the book "Freeing Your Child from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder," by T.E. Chansky (see record 2000-16012-000). This is a concise and helpful resource for parents who are seeking active participation as an agent in their child's treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It is likely that one book alone will never be sufficient to help a child and/or parent through an entire course of treatment for OCD; rather, change appears to come through a combination of many resources, including information, books, professional support, and skill development. As part of a comprehensive intervention approach, this book provides a "roadmap" for parents seeking a helping role in supporting their child's treatment trajectory. Although this book contains invaluable information for parents, the information and guidelines will be best understood and most effectively employed when parents are consulting with a qualified psychologist. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)