Mothers’ Attributions in Reminiscing Conversations About Children’s Successes and Failures: Connections With Children’s Self-Evaluations

Effects of feedback on children’s self-evaluations are well established, yet little is known about how parents talk with children about everyday successes and failures, despite the importance of parent–child reminiscing in children’s psychological understanding. We examine mothers’ attributions and performance evaluations in conversations about their 5-year-olds’ (N = 80) success and failure experiences, and connections between conversations and children’s self-evaluations. Conversations differed for success and failure: Mothers were equally likely to make internal-person, internal-process, or external attributions for successes, but were most likely to make an evaluation. For failures, mothers were equally likely to make internal-process or external attributions, or evaluations. Internal-person attributions for success and external attributions were associated with negative self-evaluations. However, children expressed fewer negative self-evaluations when mothers made internal-process attributions for failure, or positively evaluated the success. Results support the experimental literature and extend it to external attributions, which were common in mothers’ framing and linked to negative self-evaluations

Development and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Community Norms of Child Neglect Scale

This article describes the development of the Community Norms of Child Neglect Scale (CNCNS), a new measure of perceptions of child neglect, for use in community samples. The CNCNS differentiates among four subtypes of neglect (failure to provide for basic needs, lack of supervision, emotional neglect, and educational neglect). Scenarios ranging in seriousness for each subtype were presented to a large community sample (N = 3,809). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a four-factor model provided a better fit to the data than did a model specifying only one overall neglect factor, suggesting this sample distinguished among the four subtypes of neglect. The authors tested measurement equivalence across individuals who work with children and lay community respondents and across rural and urban respondents, with results indicating a very similar structure across these groups. These initial reliability and validity data suggest that the CNCNS may be of use in comparing perceptions of child neglect among individuals and across communities

Attachment security, self concept, and self evaluation in response to feedback: Extending the internal working model in early childhood

Attachment theorists often describe internal working models, constructed from a history of interactions in the parent-child relationship, as “interpretive filters” for new information. Although a growing number of studies have confirmed links between secure attachment and more positive views of the self in early childhood, little empirical research has examined the corresponding proposal that young children interpret or integrate information about the self in light of their attachment security. This dissertation examined the hypothesis that young children’s attachment security would relate not only to the global positivity of their self concepts, but also to patterns of self evaluation in response to positive and negative feedback, and in a challenging task. Additionally, this study proposed a process model in which children rely on underlying beliefs about the self in responding to self relevant information. In other words, children’s existing self concepts would mediate links between attachment and self evaluation. This study examined hypotheses in a sample of 76 four- and five-year old children (44 girls). Children completed measures of self concept, made self evaluations in response to hypothetical criticism and praise scenarios, and were observed in a challenging puzzle task. Additionally, theory of mind and emotional understanding were assessed. Attachment security was measured using maternal-report Attachment Q-Sorts (Waters & Deane, 1985). Findings confirmed a link between security and a more positive self concept for girls. Attachment security was related to children’s self evaluations in the challenging puzzle task, but was unrelated to self evaluations in hypothetical scenarios. Associations of self concept and self evaluations were apparent only for older children in the sample, suggesting that they may become increasingly interrelated over time. Data did not support the hypothesis that self concept would mediate links between attachment and self evaluations. Additionally, security was positively linked to children’s theory of mind, but was unrelated to emotional understanding; neither theory of mind nor emotional understanding showed associated with self evaluations. Results point to the importance of considering in developmental context the role of attachment security in children\u27s existing self views, and in children’s integration of new self relevant information

The Role of Child Emotional Responsiveness and Maternal Negative Emotion Expression in Children’s Coping Strategy Use

This study examined the additive and interactive effects of children’s trait vicarious emotional responsiveness and maternal negative emotion expression on children’s use of coping strategies. Ninety-five children (mean age = 5.87 years) and their mothers and teachers participated in the study. The mothers reported on their own negative emotion expression and the children’s empathic concern and personal distress tendencies. The mothers and teachers reported on the children’s use of avoidant, support-seeking, and aggressive-venting coping strategies. Empathic concern was positively associated with the children’s use of support seeking and negatively associated with the children’s use of aggressive venting, whereas personal distress showed the opposite pattern of associations. Maternal negative emotion expression moderated some associations between the children’s emotional responsiveness and coping. These findings support the hypothesis that children’s tendencies to experience empathic concern or personal distress indicate functionally distinct styles of emotional arousal that may have broader consequences for socially competent behavior in response to normative stressors

MINOR CONCERNS?: An Exploration of the Objectives and Issues of Minority Research

This session seeks to engender discussion regarding goals of minority research, the identity of individuals conducting minority research, and implications of this research for social sciences and mainstream society. The panel discussion will highlight both positive and negative sequelae of the current goals and practices of minority research

Development and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Community Norms of Child Neglect Scale

This article describes the development of the Community Norms of Child Neglect Scale (CNCNS), a new measure of perceptions of child neglect, for use in community samples. The CNCNS differentiates among four subtypes of neglect (failure to provide for basic needs, lack of supervision, emotional neglect, and educational neglect). Scenarios ranging in seriousness for each subtype were presented to a large community sample (N = 3,809). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a four-factor model provided a better fit to the data than did a model specifying only one overall neglect factor, suggesting this sample distinguished among the four subtypes of neglect. The authors tested measurement equivalence across individuals who work with children and lay community respondents and across rural and urban respondents, with results indicating a very similar structure across these groups. These initial reliability and validity data suggest that the CNCNS may be of use in comparing perceptions of child neglect among individuals and across communities