Psychosocial Constraints on the Development of Resilience

Although resilience is usually thought to reside in individuals, developmental research is increasingly demonstrating that characteristics of the social context may be better predictors of resilience. When the relative contribution of early resilience and environmental challenges to later child mental health and academic achievement were compared in a longitudinal study from birth to adolescence, indicators of child resilience, such as the behavioral and emotional self-regulation characteristic of good mental health, and the cognitive self-regulation characteristic of high intelligence contributed to later competence. However, the effects of such individual resilience did not overcome the effects of high environmental challenge, such as poor parenting, antisocial peers, low-resource communities, and economic hardship. The effects of single environmental challenges become very large when accumulated into multiple risk scores even affecting the development of offspring in the next generation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72845/1/annals.1376.010.pd

Parental Discipline and Externalizing Behavior Problems in Early Childhood: The Roles of Moral Regulation and Child Gender

We tested whether individual differences in a component of early conscience mediated relations between parental discipline and externalizing behavior problems in 238 3.5-year-olds. Parents contributed assessments of discipline practices and child moral regulation. Observations of children's behavioral restraint supplemented parental reports. Parents and teachers reported on child externalizing symptoms. Parental induction, warm responsiveness, and less frequent use of physical punishment generally were associated with higher levels of moral regulation and fewer externalizing problems. Moreover, moral regulation partially mediated relationships between discipline and externalizing symptoms, with the clearest case of mediation involving induction. However, relationships were found for boys only. Results support a mediation model wherein inductive and physical discipline may influence the expression of boys' externalizing behavior through effects on conscience. Finally, results suggest that different developmental processes may be associated with early externalizing problems in boys and girls, and confirm that fathers' reports contribute to our understanding of the origins of child externalizing problems.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44592/1/10802_2004_Article_487994.pd

Pathways from parental AIDS to child psychological, educational and sexual risk: Developing an empirically-based interactive theoretical model

Increasing evidence demonstrates negative psychological, health, and developmental outcomes for children associated with parental HIV/AIDS illness and death. However, little is known about how parental AIDS leads to negative child outcomes. This study used a structural equation modelling approach to develop an empirically-based theoretical model of interactive relationships between parental or primary caregiver AIDS-illness, AIDS-orphanhood and predicted intervening factors associated with children's psychological distress, educational access and sexual health. Cross-sectional data were collected in 2009–2011, from 6002 children aged 10–17 years in three provinces of South Africa using stratified random sampling. Comparison groups included children orphaned by AIDS, orphaned by other causes and non-orphans, and children whose parents or primary caregivers were unwell with AIDS, unwell with other causes or healthy. Participants reported on psychological symptoms, educational access, and sexual health risks, as well as hypothesized sociodemographic and intervening factors. In order to build an interactive theoretical model of multiple child outcomes, multivariate regression and structural equation models were developed for each individual outcome, and then combined into an overall model.Neither AIDS-orphanhood nor parental AIDS-illness were directly associated with psychological distress, educational access, or sexual health. Instead, significant indirect effects of AIDS-orphanhood and parental AIDS-illness were obtained on all measured outcomes. Child psychological, educational and sexual health risks share a common set of intervening variables including parental disability, poverty, community violence, stigma, and child abuse that together comprise chain effects. In all models, parental AIDS-illness had stronger effects and more risk pathways than AIDS-orphanhood, especially via poverty and parental disability. AIDS-orphanhood and parental AIDS-illness impact child outcomes through multiple, interlinked pathways. The interactive model developed in this study suggests key areas of focus for interventions with AIDS-affected children

Parental attributions of control for child behaviour and their relation to discipline practices in parents of children with and without developmental delays

Children with developmental delays (DD) are at risk for developing behavior problems. Research suggests that parents’ causal attributions for child behavior are related to parenting. This study investigated this association in parents of children with DD compared to parents of typically developing (TD) children. It specifically focused on attributions of child control by separating these from attributions of responsibility, blame and intent, and from attributions of parent control and responsibility. Fifty-one parents of children with DD and 69 parents of TD children completed two questionnaires. The Written Analogue Questionnaire measured causal attributions. The Parenting Scale measured dysfunctional discipline practices. Parents of children with DD viewed the child’s role in problematic behavior more positively while also viewing misbehavior as more fixed than parents of TD children. Parents of TD children who viewed their child as more in control over misbehavior used less dysfunctional discipline, but this association was not found for parents of children with DD. The results advance understanding of how parents perceive behavior problems in children with DD and the important role these perceptions play in parental behavior management strategies. More importantly, these perceptions relate to discipline practices differently for parents of children with DD compared to parents of TD children, highlighting that parent interventions should be adapted to the specific needs of parents of children with DD

Psychological resilience in sport performers: a review of stressors and protective factors

Psychological resilience is important in sport because athletes must utilize and optimize a range of mental qualities to withstand the pressures that they experience. In this paper, we discuss psychological resilience in sport performers via a review of the stressors athletes encounter and the protective factors that help them withstand these demands. It is hoped that synthesizing what is known in these areas will help researchers gain a deeper profundity of resilience in sport, and also provide a rigorous and robust foundation for the development of a sport-specific measure of resilience. With these points in mind, we divided the narrative into two main sections. In the first section, we review the different types of stressors encountered by sport performers under three main categories: competitive, organizational, and personal. Based on our recent research examining psychological resilience in Olympics champions (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2012), in the second section we discuss the five main families of psychological factors (viz. positive personality, motivation, confidence, focus, perceived social support) that protect the best athletes from the potential negative effect of stressors. It is anticipated that this review will help sport psychology researchers examine the interplay between stressors and protective factors which will, in turn, focus the analytical lens on the processes underlying psychological resilience in athletes

Stress‐Related Changes in Toddlers and Their Mothers Following the Attack of S eptember 11

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100332/1/ajop12055.pd