Children’s representations of family relationships, peer information processing, and school adjustment.

This study examined children’s peer information processing as an explanatory mechanism underlying the association between their insecure representations of interparental and parent–child relationships and school adjustment in a sample of 210 first graders. Consistent with emotional security theory (P. T. Davies & E. M. Cummings, 1994), results indicated that children’s insecure representations of the interparental relationship were indirectly related to their academic functioning through association with their negative information processing of stressful peer events. Insecure interparental relationships were specifically linked with negative peer information processing patterns that, in turn, predicted increases in child maladjustment over a 1-year period. These pathways remained robust after taking into account the roles of representations of parent–child relationships, trait measures of child negative affect, and socioeconomic characteristics as predictors in the analyses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interparental aggression and young children's representations of family relationships.

Children's maternal, self, and marital representations were examined in 46 children 3 1/2 to 7 years old using the MacArthur Story Stem Battery. Children drawn from agencies serving battered women expressed fewer positive representations of their mothers and themselves, were more likely to portray interparental conflict as escalating, and were more avoidant and less coherent in their narratives about family interactions than children from a nonviolent community sample. Interparental aggression uniquely predicted representations of conflict escalation and avoidance after accounting for parent-child aggression, and the two types of aggression had additive effects in predicting positive maternal representations. The results suggest that witnessing aggression in the family affects children's developing beliefs about close relationships and may be a process by which these experiences give rise to later problems in social and emotional functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interparental conflict, negative parenting, and children's adjustment: Bridging links between parents' depression and children's psychological distress.

Pathways linking parental depressive symptoms, adult relationship insecurity, interparental conflict, negative parenting, and children's psychological adjustment (internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems) were assessed using a 3-wave longitudinal research design. Two-parent families (N = 352) with 11- to 13-year-old children (179 boys, 173 girls) participated in the study. Maternal and paternal depressive symptoms were associated with insecurity in adult close relationships assessed 12 months later, which was concurrently related to heightened levels of interparental conflict. Controlling for children's initial symptom levels, interparental conflict was related to child appraisals of father and mother rejection assessed an additional 12 months later, which were related to children's internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems, respectively. Results are discussed with regard to the implications for understanding the complex interplay between adult depressive symptoms, attributions in close adult relationships, interparental conflict, negative parenting, and children's psychological adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Caregiving Representations of Mothers of Behaviorally Inhibited and Uninhibited Preschool Children.

This study examined differences in the caregiving representations of mothers of 3- to 4-year-old behaviorally inhibited and uninhibited children with secure or insecure attachments. Mothers of inhibited children perceived their children as more vulnerable than did mothers of uninhibited children, and they acknowledged difficulties associated with their children's inhibited temperament. However, mothers of insecure inhibited children were less likely than mothers of secure inhibited children to validate their children's emotional experiences and to be aware of their children's internal states and perspectives, and they showed higher levels of boundary violation and defense against negative affect. Implications of the more problematic caregiving representations of mothers of insecure inhibited children for parent-child relationships are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A process analysis of the transmission of distress from interparental conflict to parenting: Adult relationship security as an explanatory mechanism.

Toward advancing conceptualizations of the spillover hypothesis, this study examined the conditions and mechanisms underlying the transmission of distress from the interparental relationship to parenting difficulties over a 2-year period in a sample of 233 mothers (M = 35.0 years) and fathers (M = 36.8 years) of kindergarten children. Findings from autoregressive structural equation models indicated that parents’ gender moderated associations between interparental conflict and parental psychological control and insensitivity to children’s negative affect. Pathways between interparental conflict and parenting difficulties over the 2-year period were significant for fathers but not mothers. Analysis of insecurity and depressive symptoms as affective mechanisms of spillover revealed that adult relationship insecurity was a significant mediator in the pathways between interparental conflict and parenting difficulties experienced by fathers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interparental conflict, children's social cognitions, and child aggression: A test of a mediational model.

Although correlations between interparental conflict and child maladjustment are well-established, the processes connecting these 2 phenomena are less understood. The present study tested whether an aggressogenic cognitive style mediates the relationship between interparental conflict and child aggression. A multiethnic sample of 115 families with a child between the ages of 7 and 13 years participated. Questionnaires were used to assess parents' and children's perceptions of interparental conflict, children's social problem-solving strategies and beliefs about aggression, and parent and teacher reports of child aggression. Support was found for the mediating effect of aggressogenic cognitions on children's school aggression but not on children's aggression at home. Implications for understanding the associations among interparental conflict, children's social cognitions, and child aggression in different environmental contexts are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's appraisals of interparental conflict: Situational and contextual influences.

Children's appraisals of interparental conflict have been linked with their adjustment and their strategies for coping with conflict, but the factors that influence the appraisal process are less clear. This study examined cognitive and emotional responses of 60 7–12-year-old children to audiotaped conflictual interactions. Properties of the conflict, family factors, and child characteristics were related to children's appraisals; the most consistent predictors were the level of hostility expressed in the interaction, children's prior experience with physically aggressive interparental conflict, and children's age. These findings indicate that children's perceptions and interpretations of interparental conflict are influenced by the larger context in which a conflict occurs as well as the way the conflict is expressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of interparental aggression on children's adjustment: The moderating role of cognitive appraisal and coping.

This research examined the relationship between interparental aggression and children's adjustment through an analysis of the moderating effects of children's cognitive appraisal and coping strategies. Participants were 80 children in Grades 6, 7, and 8 who completed measures of level of interparental aggression and of cognitive appraisal and coping strategies reported in response to parents' conflicts. Children's adjustment was based on self-report measures of self-worth, externalizing behavior, and depression. Results showed that more frequent and intense conflict was associated with greater adjustment problems for children. Problematic beliefs about interparental conflict and ineffective coping strategies were also related to greater maladjustment. Significant interaction effects suggest that perceived peer availability and the use of social supports may buffer the negative effects of marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional expression in the family as a context for children's appraisals of interparental conflict.

The cognitive contextual framework proposes that the emotional climate in the family plays a role in shaping how children perceive and evaluate interparental conflict. This hypothesis was tested in a sample of 144 8- to 12-year-old children and their parents. Children in families that expressed high levels of negative affect and low levels of positive affect reported greater self-blame for conflict, but parents' expressiveness did not predict children's threat appraisals. Positive and negative expressiveness moderated the association between exposure to parental conflict and children's internalizing and externalizing problems. These data suggest that the broader family context can shape the meaning of conflict to children and increase understanding of the conditions under which parental discord leads to child maladjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional, cognitive, and family systems mediators of children's adjustment to interparental conflict.

Emotional, cognitive, and family systems processes have been identified as mediators of the association between interparental conflict and children's adjustment. However, little is known about how they function in relation to one another because they have not all been assessed in the same study. This investigation examined the relations among children's exposure to parental conflict, their appraisals of threat and blame, their emotional reaction, and triangulation into parental disagreements. One hundred fifty ethnically diverse 8- to 12-year-old children and both of their parents participated in the study. Comparisons of 3 models proposing different relations among these processes indicated that they function as parallel and independent mediators of children's adjustment. Specifically, children's self-blaming attributions and emotional distress were uniquely associated with both internalizing and externalizing problems, whereas perceived threat uniquely predicted internalizing problems and triangulation uniquely predicted externalizing problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prospective effects of interparental conflict on child attachment security and the moderating role of parents' romantic attachment.

This study investigated the impact of parents' observed conflict behavior on subsequent child attachment security, both as a main effect and as moderated by parents' romantic attachment. Participants were 80 heterosexual couples involving men from the Oregon Youth Study and their first-born children. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to predict child security with each parent. Interparental psychological aggression predicted lower child security with father, regardless of romantic attachment. If the father was insecure, interparental positive engagement predicted lower child security with him. If either the mother or father was avoidant, interparental withdrawal did not predict lower child security, though it did for more secure parents. Results are discussed in terms of implications of attachment-(in)congruent behavior for parents' emotional availability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prediction of children's academic competence from their effortful control, relationships, and classroom participation.

The authors examined the relations among children's effortful control, school relationships, classroom participation, and academic competence with a sample of 7- to 12-year-old children (N = 264). Parents and children reported on children's effortful control, and teachers and children reported on children's school relationships and classroom participation. Children's grade point averages (GPAs) and absences were obtained from school-issued report cards. Significant positive correlations existed between effortful control, school relationships, classroom participation, and academic competence. Consistent with expectations, the teacher-child relationship, social competence, and classroom participation partially mediated the relation between effortful control and change in GPA from the beginning to the end of the school year. The teacher-child relationship and classroom participation also partially mediated the relation between effortful control and change in school absences across the year. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's influence in the marital relationship.

In a 3-wave longitudinal study, the authors tested hypotheses regarding children's influence on the marital relationship, examining relations between interparental discord and children's negative emotional reactivity, agentic behavior, dysregulated behavior, and psychosocial adjustment. Participants were 232 cohabiting mothers and fathers who completed questionnaires and a marital conflict resolution task. Consistent with theory, interparental discord related to children's negative emotional reactivity, which in turn related to children's agentic and dysregulated behavior. Agentic behavior related to decreases in interparental discord, whereas dysregulated behavior related to increases in discord and elevations in children's adjustment problems. Person-oriented analyses of agentic and dysregulated responses indicated distinct clusters of children linked with meaningful individual differences in marital and psychosocial functioning. Results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms of child effects, such as increased parental awareness of children's distress potentially leading to reduced marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instruction begins in the home: Relations between parental instruction and children's self-regulation in the classroom.

The study examined the effectiveness of 3 aspects of parental instruction for predicting children's self-regulation in school. Fathers, mothers, and their children (52 families) were visited in their homes the summer before the child entered 3rd grade. Metacognitive content (task and strategy information), manner of instruction (small steps at an appropriate pace), and emotional support were coded from parents' instructions to their children for a problem-solving task. Children's self-regulatory behaviors in the classroom were assessed the following school year. Two patterns of relations were observed. Manner of instruction predicted children's attention to instructions and help-seeking in the classroom. Metacognitive content of instructions did not predict these aspects of self-regulation. In contrast, metacognitive content of instructions presented in an understandable manner with emotional support predicted children's monitoring and metacognitive talk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's appraisals of interparental conflict: Measurement and links with adjustment problems.

The present study investigated 2 questions pertinent to understanding developmental aspects of children's conflict appraisals: (a) Do 7- to 9-year-old children make reliable distinctions between their perceptions of conflict and their appraisals of threat and self-blame? (b) Do threat and blame appraisals mediate the association between exposure to interparental conflict and adjustment problems in this age group? Factor analysis of a new version of the Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale (CPIC-Y) designed for younger children showed that 179 7- to 9-year-old children distinguished properties of conflict from their appraisals of it. Moreover, as predicted by the cognitive-contextual framework, threat and self-blame appraisals mediated the link between conflict and internalizing problems but not externalizing problems. This study provides compelling evidence that appraisals of interparental conflict can be reliably measured at relatively young ages and suggests that perceptions of threat and self-blame function similarly in 7- to 9-year-olds as they do in older children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sense of relatedness as a factor in children's academic engagement and performance.

Children's sense of relatedness is vital to their academic motivation from 3rd to 6th grade. Children's (n = 641) reports of relatedness predicted changes in classroom engagement over the school year and contributed over and above the effects of perceived control. Regression and cumulative risk analyses revealed that relatedness to parents, teachers, and peers each uniquely contributed to students' engagement, especially emotional engagement. Girls reported higher relatedness than boys, but relatedness to teachers was a more salient predictor of engagement for boys. Feelings of relatedness to teachers dropped from 5th to 6th grade, but the effects of relatedness on engagement were stronger for 6th graders. Discussion examines theoretical, empirical, and practical implications of relatedness as a key predictor of children's academic motivation and performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of specific emotions in children's responses to interparental conflict: A test of the model.

Mothers, fathers, and their 6-year-old children (N?=?164) participated in a study testing key tenets of the specific emotions model of marital conflict. Parents reported their marital conflict strategies, were observed interacting with their children, and rated children's behavioral adjustment. Children reported their emotional reactions to specific interparental conflicts. Results support the specific emotions model. Children's behaviors mirrored the marital or parental behaviors of same-gender parents. Indirect effects of marital aggression through parental behavior were detected, and marital and parental behaviors interacted to predict girls' externalizing. Girls' anger, sadness, and fear increased with fathers' marital aggression. Fear and the anger by fear interaction predicted girls' internalizing. Fathers' marital aggression interacted with anger to predict externalizing and interacted with fear to predict internalizing behavior in boys. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Continuity and change in early school engagement: Predictive of children's achievement trajectories from first to eighth grade?

Premises about the effects of early engagement on achievement were investigated with 383 children who were followed from ages 5.5 to 13.5. Change and continuity in behavioral (cooperative-resistant classroom participation) and emotional (school liking-avoidance) engagement were assessed during Grades 1-3 and were examined within variable- and person-oriented analyses as antecedents of scholastic progress from Grades 1 to 8. Findings corroborated the premises that change as well as continuity in early school engagement is predictive of children's long-term scholastic growth. Compared to children who participated cooperatively in classrooms, those who became increasingly resistant across the primary grades displayed lesser scholastic growth. Among children who manifested enduring engagement patterns, those who exhibited a combination of higher behavioral and emotional engagement across the primary grades made greater academic progress than those who displayed lower levels of these two forms of engagement. Overall, the results of this investigation were consistent with the school engagement hypothesis and extend what is known about the predictive contributions of early school engagement to children's achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Peer exclusion and victimization: Processes that mediate the relation between peer group rejection and children's classroom engagement and achievement?

Longitudinal data from a study of kindergarten through 5th graders were used to estimate a structural model in which chronic peer exclusion and chronic peer abuse were hypothesized to mediate the link between children's early peer rejection, later classroom engagement, and achievement. Peer exclusion and abuse were expected to predict changes in 2 forms of school engagement (classroom participation and school avoidance), and changes in both forms of engagement were expected to predict changes in achievement. The model fit the data well and lent support to the premise that distinct forms of peer maltreatment and classroom engagement mediate the link between early peer rejection and changes in children's achievement. Early peer rejection was associated with declining classroom participation and increasing school avoidance, but different forms of chronic peer maltreatment mediated these relations. Whereas chronic peer exclusion principally mediated the link between peer rejection and classroom participation, chronic peer abuse primarily mediated the link between rejection and school avoidance. Children's reduced classroom participation, more than gains in school avoidance, anteceded decrements in children's achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital conflict and children's adjustment: A cognitive-contextual framework.

Marital problems have been related to numerous indexes of maladjustment in children. Although several parameters of this association have been identified, the process by which exposure to interparental conflict gives rise to adjustment problems in children is largely unexplored. Research on the link between marital conflict and child maladjustment therefore is critically evaluated, and a framework is presented that organizes existing studies and suggests directions for future research on processes that may account for the association. According to the framework, the impact of marital conflict is mediated by children's understanding of the conflict, which is shaped by contextual, cognitive, and developmental factors. The implications of the framework for children's adjustment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)