Childhood social interactions and young adult bad conduct.

Case history data of former patients at 2 child guidance clinics that had been subsequently discharged from service because of bad conduct were examined. A major and significant trend was found reflecting an inverse relationship between peer group adjustment and evidence of bad conduct. The adult "bad conduct" group seemed to be characterized as children who had antagonized their peers to an unusual degree. The results demonstrated the predictive value of adjustment in childhood and behavior in adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluation of an assessment and training unit for developmentally delayed children

The Rata villa assessment and training unit is intended to provide a short term community service for the evaluation and treatment of developmentally delayed children who are becoming difficult to manage at home or in community educational or training facilities. Since it opened the unit has dealt with 102 first admissions with a wide variety of problems, ranging in age from two to 15 years and varying in intellectual level from normal intelligence to profoundly retarded. In 71 percent of these cases permanent improvements have been made in at least one of the problem areas identified by the child's parents on admission. The treatment programmes are considered to have contributed to maintaining the child in the community as only 28 percent of those treated are currently long term residents in psychopaedic hospitals.     

A social desirability questionnaire for young children.

The Young Children's Social Desirability Scale based on the MMPI L scale model was constructed and administered to 437 nursery school children. Split-half reliabilities were substantial for children over 4 and moderate for those under 4; test-retest reliabilities were moderate for children over 4 and mixed for those under 4. Social desirability scores increased with age, showed a low positive relationship to picture vocabulary IQ, and were unrelated to sex in a high-socioeconomic sample, but were higher for girls in a more general sample. 3 construct validation studies are summarized which indicate that children who score high on the scale are more motivated than low scorers to respond positively to interpersonal demands. (23 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physical contact in interactions between clinicians and young children.

51 child-clinicians reported judged intervention outcomes and frequency of occurrence of 4 types of physical contact (touching, holding hands, sitting on lap, and hugging) for 368 children (mean age 7.71 yrs). Although contact frequencies varied markedly from 89% for touching to 22% for sitting on lap, they were moderately intercorrelated. Girls had more physical contact than boys, especially for hugging. Younger, compared to older, children had significantly more physical contact and more positive outcomes. Female, compared to male, clinicians had more physical contact with children. Doctoral-level clinicians reported fewer physical contacts with children than nondoctoral clinicians. Clinicians in private practice reported fewer physical contacts and more positive outcomes than those in the public sector. Psychiatrists touched children less often than social workers or psychologists. There were no relationships between the frequencies of any physical-contact variable and judged intervention outcome. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physical contact in helping interactions with young children.

Studied frequency of occurrence of 4 types of physical contact (touching, holding hands, sitting on lap, and hugging) during school-based helping interactions between 49 nonprofessional child aides and a total of 559 children from kindergarten through 6th grade and from special education classes. The Physical Contact Survey was used to assess the frequency of occurrence of the 4 types of physical contact; the Classroom Adjustment Rating Scale, Aide Status Evaluation Form, and Professional Termination Report were used to assess children's referral and outcome status. Findings indicate that contacts varied markedly from a high of 81% for touching to a low of 4% for sitting on lap. Four parametric variables accurately predicted the occurrence of contact behaviors: (a) Girls had more contact than boys; (b) younger children had more contact than older; (c) aides from different buildings differed in the amount of contact they had with children; and (d) aides previously trained in Ginnottian limit-setting approaches had fewer physical contacts with children than those without such training. Frequency of contact behaviors did not relate either to a child's adjustment status at referral or to intervention outcomes. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time in day care and social participation of young children.

The relation between time in day care and social behavior of preschool children was investigated at three child-care centers varying in location, populations served, and program characteristics. Child age and sex were held constant statistically in assessing relations between time in care and social participation. Day-care experience was related to increased social participation and, especially, to increased associative interaction with peers and decreased unoccupied and onlooker behaviors, in both a large community day-care center and a small university center. In the latter, time in care was also positively related to amount of constructive play activity shown by children. In another center, there were minimal relations between time in day care and either positive or negative behaviors toward peers. Implications of these differential findings for future research on day care are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deliberate memory behavior in the delayed reactions of very young children.

34 3-yr-olds (Exp I), 23 2-yr-olds (Exp II), and 30 3-4 yr olds (Exp III) were presented a memory task that required recalling a particular location at the end of a delay. At the beginning of the delay, half of the children were instructed to remember the location and half were instructed simply to wait. 3-yr-olds who were instructed to remember were observed to engage in behaviors during the delay which seemed to increase their recall, in contrast to 3-yr-olds who were instructed to wait. Additional observations in Exp III also showed that a positive relation existed between such delay period memory behavior and later recall. This differentiated, deliberate memory behavior was not observed for 2-yr-olds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cooperative interactions and sharing between very young children and their parents.

Recorded early forms of cooperation and sharing displayed by 12-, 18-, and 24-mo-old children in the course of the children's interactions with their parents in a play setting. Eight children at each age were observed. One 12-, 7 18-, and 7 24-mo-olds engaged the parent in cooperative interchanges characterized by coordinated operations on a mutual array of toys. The children also shared by showing and giving objects to the parent. Showing was recorded for 7 of the 12-mo-olds and all of the older children, and giving was recorded for 4 12-, 8 18-, and 7 24-mo-olds. The sharing data for the 18-mo-olds did not depart reliably from previous findings. Both cooperative interchanges and sharing appeared to increase in frequency in the course of the 2nd year. The 3 behaviors were reliably interrelated. Although the relation of these activities to later sharing and cooperation is unclear, they serve contemporary prosocial functions and provide opportunities for further prosocial learning. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of social comparison on facilitative self-control in young children.

Investigated the effects of social comparison upon 96 4- and 5-yr-old children's subsequent task perseveration, attention to task, and self-confidence. Ss, from a middle-class nursery school, were 6 pairs of boys and 6 pairs of girls for each of 4 experimental conditions. Ss in the negative social comparison condition attended less efficiently to, and expressed less confidence in, their ability to solve a difficult wooden-cube puzzle than did a control group of nonsocial comparison children. The length of task perseveration by Ss in the social comparison groups did not differ significantly, although the negative comparison group persisted as long or longer than the positive, equal, or nonsocial comparison groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of role-taking skills in young children.

A role-taking hierarchy was developed based on analysis of the H. Borke (see record 1972-00686-001), the N. Burns and L. Cavey (1957), and the M. J. Chandler and S. Greenspan (see record 1973-02093-001) role-taking tasks, and on 2 new tasks constructed by the authors, all of which deal with the same affective content. Tasks were presented to 7 girls and 7 boys in each of 3 age groups (3 yrs 0 mo to 3 yrs 11 mo, 4 yrs 0 mo to 4 yrs 11 mo, and 5 yrs 0 mo to 5 yrs 11 mo). Data were analyzed by a scalogram and a cluster analysis. The hypothesis that these tasks would form a hierarchy such that the skills needed for the early tasks are logically prerequisite to those needed for the later tasks was supported. A fundamental structural difference--sequential vs simultaneous decentering--was identified. The multidimensional nature of role-taking tasks is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of proportional reasoning: Where young children go wrong.

Previous studies have found that children have difficulty solving proportional reasoning problems involving discrete units until 10 to 12 years of age, but can solve parallel problems involving continuous quantities by 6 years of age. The present studies examine where children go wrong in processing proportions that involve discrete quantities. A computerized proportional equivalence choice task was administered to kindergartners through 4th-graders in Study 1, and to 1st- and 3rd-graders in Study 2. Both studies involved 4 between-subjects conditions that were formed by pairing continuous and discrete target proportions with continuous and discrete choice alternatives. In Study 1, target and choice alternatives were presented simultaneously; in Study 2, target and choice alternatives were presented sequentially. In both studies, children performed significantly worse when both the target and choice alternatives were represented with discrete quantities than when either or both of the proportions involved continuous quantities. Taken together, these findings indicate that children go astray on proportional reasoning problems involving discrete units only when a numerical match is possible, suggesting that their difficulty is due to an overextension of numerical equivalence concepts to proportional equivalence problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dyadic social interactions.

Kraemer and Jacklin (1979) proposed a method of analysis of univariate dyadic social interactions or relational data, and Mendoza and Graziano (1982) extended this method to multivariate relations. Their approach is based on an analysis-of-variance-type model that contains parameters characterizing the behavior of actors and partners and their interactions on each relation. The techniques presented in this article offer an alternative approach to the multivariate analysis of social interactions by realizing that many relations yield discrete-valued data and thus are better modeled by using methods designed for categorical data. This alternative approach is also more general because it allows more types of models to be fit. We illustrate, using the same data analyzed by the earlier methods. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive decentration and social codes: Communicative effectiveness in young children from differing family contexts.

Studied the effectiveness of verbal communication among 37 6-yr-old middle-class children from families exemplifying a person or a position social code. Families' social code was the percentage of person-oriented regulatory appeal statements made by mothers in response to questions concerning how they would attempt to regulate their children's behavior. On each of 5 measures comparing the form and content of messages to sighted and blindfolded listeners, children from person-oriented families showed greater evidence of accommodating their communication to the listener's perspective than did children from position-oriented families. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of elementary deductive reasoning in young children.

This study examined the claim (J. Hawkins et al; see record 1984-25517-001) that young children can reason deductively with content for which "practical knowledge is irrelevant." Ss 6, 8, and 11 years of age were given a set of standard logical syllogisms and a matching set of illogical ones. Six-year-olds gave similar responses to and used similar types of justifications for both logical and illogical forms, indicating that correct performance on the former might be accounted for by a low-level matching strategy, not necessarily by deductive reasoning. A clear developmental pattern emerged, showing that the ability of children to differentiate responses to the two forms improves over this age period. However, the number of children able to explicitly describe illogicality remained small, even among 11-year-olds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Patterns of motivation and social behavior associated with microcomputer use of young children.

Patterns of motivation and social behavior among children working in pairs at microcomputers were investigated over a 4-mo period by observing 95 kindergarten students. Students displayed a high level of interest that did not diminish over the course of the study as a novelty effect would have predicted, although on-task behavior and indications of intense interest did decline slightly over time. Students were generally equitable and cooperative in their interactions. Almost no gender differences were evident in either motivational or social behavior patterns. Teachers were equitable in their interaction with boys and girls, and they were more likely to interact with low-achieving students than with high achievers. Results suggest that introducing children to microcomputers at this age might reduce the predominance of male computer use and interest that predictably emerge during the elementary school years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers and fathers of young developmentally disabled and nondisabled boys: Adaptation and spousal support.

Assessed the extent to which the presence of a young developmentally disabled or nondisabled male child affected adaptation and family roles for both parents. Developmental child assessments, in-home ratings of parenting, and maternal and paternal self-assessments and interviews were included. Marital adjustment, disruptions in family life, and observed parenting of the child (but not depression) varied with disability status of child. Mothers in both groups reported more depressive symptoms and family disruptions than fathers. Fathers of disabled children assumed less responsibility than comparison fathers for child care, even in mother-employed families. Decreased father involvement in child care was specific to the disabled child, not to siblings, and was related to severity of the child's atypical behaviors. Expressive support from one's spouse was the best predictor of quality of parenting for both mothers and fathers of disabled and nondisabled sons. Disharmony between current and "appropriate" spousal support was a significant negative predictor of perceived and observed parental adaptation. The concept of harmonic responsiveness was proposed to explain how proffered support must be tuned to the perceived needs and expectations of one's spouse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Entry behavior and emotion regulation abilities of developmentally delayed boys

This study investigated the social deficits of developmentally delayed children. Participants were 48 five-year-old to eight-year-old boys. Delayed children (n = 20) were compared with nondelayed children of similar chronological age (CA nondelayed; n = 20) and of similar mental age (n = 8). The behavior and emotion regulation strategies of participants were assessed in an analogue entry situation. Delayed children were just as able as nondelayed children to understand the play themes of others but were more intrusive in delivering their entry attempts. Delayed children appeared to have less effective emotion regulation strategies for coping with entry failure and were more likely to increase their use of disruptive entry strategies over time than CA nondelayed children.     

Peer-mediated social intervention for young children with autism

In this paper, we trace the history of peer-mediated intervention for young children with autism. Special attention is paid to outcomes achieved, implementation strategies, practicality, combining peer-mediation and naturalistic teaching, and overall conclusions from 20 years of study.     

Marginal and mindful: Deviants in social interactions.

Master status people's behavior, physical appearance, or life circumstance is statistically unusual and centrally defining (e.g., the physically attractive, the obese, the intellectually gifted, the facially scarred, the talented, the athletic, Blacks, gays, the wealthy, rape and incest victims). These individuals were paired with people without such conditions. Each pair was left alone on a pretext and covertly videotaped. Pairs were then separated; each member spontaneously recalled information about her partner and the experimental room and provided a record of her thoughts and feelings during the interaction. As hypothesized, all master status Ss were particularly likely to be mindful in social interactions; they recalled detailed information about the situation and often took their partner's perspective during the interaction. The positive or negative connotations of the master status conditions were irrelevant in predicting Ss cognitions (mindfulness) but were critical in determining Ss behaviors (interaction strategies). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of social functioning in preschizophrenia children and adolescents: A systematic review.

Schizophrenia is associated with severe deficits in social functioning. Similar deficits may be present prior to psychosis onset, in childhood and adolescence. If so, then prepsychosis social deficits could provide clues to the development of pathological processes in preschizophrenia children and could potentially improve early identification of the disorder and suggest targets for intervention. Evidence is reviewed from birth cohort, case- control, and familial high-risk studies within distinct periods of development to clarify the nature, timing, and specificity of social deficits in preschizophrenia children and adolescents. The results indicate that poor social functioning does differentiate preschizophrenia children and adolescents from their peers and can be a sensitive and potentially specific predictor of schizophrenia, not just psychopathology in general. Furthermore, age (but not sex) appears to be an important moderator of the strength and specificity of the association between particular social deficits (e.g., externalizing, internalizing) and later schizophrenia. Results are discussed in the context of current developmental theories of timing and pathophysiology of schizophrenia involving hypothalamic- pituitary-adrenal dysregulation. Implications for the early identification and treatment of preschizophrenia individuals are also considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)