Effects of parental divorce on marital commitment and confidence.

Research on the intergenerational transmission of divorce has demonstrated that compared with offspring of nondivorced parents, those of divorced parents generally have more negative attitudes toward marriage as an institution and are less optimistic about the feasibility of a long-lasting, healthy marriage. It is also possible that when entering marriage themselves, adults whose parents divorced have less personal relationship commitment to their own marriages and less confidence in their own ability to maintain a happy marriage with their spouse. However, this prediction has not been tested. In the current study, we assessed relationship commitment and relationship confidence, as well as parental divorce and retrospectively reported interparental conflict, in a sample of 265 engaged couples prior to their first marriage. Results demonstrated that women's, but not men's, parental divorce was associated with lower relationship commitment and lower relationship confidence. These effects persisted when controlling for the influence of recalled interparental conflict and premarital relationship adjustment. The current findings suggest that women whose parents divorced are more likely to enter marriage with relatively lower commitment to, and confidence in, the future of those marriages, potentially raising their risk for divorce. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of constructive and dramatic play on perspective taking in very young children.

Studied the effects of 2 types of play experiences—constructive and dramatic—on preschool children's perspective-taking (PT) performance. Pretests and posttests for 3 types of PT (perceptual, cognitive, and affective) were administered to 51 preschoolers, (mean age 4 yrs 10 mo) in 3 groups. Group 1 received 10 constructive play sessions, Group 2 received 10 dramatic play sessions, and Group 3 received no play treatment. Both play treatments produced substantial and roughly equivalent improvements in PT. These effects were general across the 3 types of PT, and they were not constrained by the Ss' pretraining performance on the PT tests. In view of recent evidence that some PT measures may not be reliable, a follow-up reliability study was conducted with 48 preschool children, mean age 4 yrs 8 mo. The test–retest reliabilities of the instruments used in the main experiment were high (i.e., perceptual task .72, cognitive tasks .64 and .49, and affective tasks .53 and .68). (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of three play conditions on separation anxiety in young children.

Evaluated the effects of separation-relevant play on separation anxiety in young children to test the hypothesis that play can reduce anxiety. Ss were 32 males and 32 females, aged 2–6 yrs, rated by their teachers as anxious about separation from parents. Ss were assigned to 1 of 3 thematic-play conditions (free play, directed play, and modeling) and a 4th nonthematic-play (control) condition, so that pretreatment anxiety levels were approximately equivalent across conditions. All 3 experimental conditions were associated with lower posttest anxiety scores on a speech-disturbance measure but not on teacher ratings. Higher quality of play (mastery) was associated with lower posttest anxiety scores. Implications are discussed for play therapy, separation-anxiety treatments, and the use of speech disturbance as a measure of anxiety in young children. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term effects of parental divorce on parent-child relationships, adjustment, and achievement in young adulthood.

Longitudinal data from the National Survey of Children were examined to investigate whether effects of parental divorce are evident in young adulthood. Among 18–22 yr olds from disrupted families, 65% had poor relationships with their fathers and 30% with their mothers, 25% had dropped out of high school, and 40% had received psychological help. Even after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic differences, youths from disrupted families were twice as likely to exhibit these problems as youths from nondisrupted families. A significant effect of divorce on mother–child relationships was evident in adulthood, whereas none was found in adolescence. Youths experiencing disruption before 6 yrs of age showed poorer relationships with their fathers than those experiencing disruption later in childhood. Overall, remarriage did not have a protective effect, but there were indications of amelioration among those who experienced early disruption. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Practical limitations in considering psychotherapy with children of separation and divorce.

Addresses the complementary but distinct function of performing psychotherapy with children involved in separation and divorce. The author focuses on many of the practical limits necessary that must be considered prior to accepting and while working with such cases in order to maximize the potential for therapeutic success and to minimize professional liability. Educating referral sources, inclusion of both parents, establishing a contract for treatment, anticipating triangulation, and considerations affecting the duration and termination of treatment are discussed within the context of rapidly evolving state mandates and legislation regarding divorce and parenting. A sample agreement for parents regarding limitations and goals of psychotherapy with a child of divorce is appended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Video comprehensibility and attention in very young children.

Earlier research established that preschool children pay less attention to television that is sequentially or linguistically incomprehensible. The authors of this study determined the youngest age for which this effect can be found. One hundred and three 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24-month-olds' looking and heart rate were recorded while they watched Teletubbies, a television program designed for very young children. Experimenters manipulated comprehensibility by either randomly ordering shots or reversing dialogue to become backward speech. Infants watched 1 normal segment and 1 distorted version of the same segment. Only 24-month-olds, and to some extent 18-month-olds, distinguished between normal and distorted videos by looking for longer durations toward the normal stimuli. The results suggest that it may not be until the middle of the second year that children demonstrate the earliest beginnings of comprehension of video as it is currently produced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological working memory in very young children.

This study was designed to establish whether phonological working memory skills could be assessed in children below 4 yrs of age. A group of 2- and 3-yr-old children were tested on 3 phonological memory measures (digit span, nonword repetition, and word repetition) and were also given tasks that tapped other cognitive skills. Scores on the 3 phonological memory tasks were closely related. In addition, repetition performance was linked with both vocabulary knowledge and articulation rate. Results indicate that phonological memory skills can be reliably assessed in very young children by using conventional serial span and repetition procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The understanding of invariance by very young children.

Conducted 3 conservation experiments with a total of 164 3-6 yr. olds to determine whether young children understand the invariance of quantity. Results show that (a) even 3-yr-olds were able to transfer a quantity judgment over a perceptual transformation very well, (b) Ss only failed to make this kind of transfer when the judgments normally produced by the pre- and post-transformation displays were in direct conflict, and (c) training that some cues provide a more reliable basis for quantity judgments than others enabled Ss to transfer quantity judgments over perceptual transformations much more effectively than they had previously. It is concluded that very young children have a basic understanding of invariance, and that their real difficulty in quantity tasks is in distinguishing between a correct and an incorrect basis for quantity judgments. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family and legal indicators of child adjustment to divorce among families with young children.

This research used structural equation modeling to examine relations among family dynamics, attorney involvement, and the adjustment of young children (0-6 years) at the time of parental separation. The article presents baseline data (N = 102 nonresidential fathers and N = 110 primary caretaking mothers) from a larger longitudinal study. Results showed that the effects of parental conflict on child outcomes were mediated by paternal involvement, the parent-child relationship, and attorney involvement. A scale assessing parental gatekeeping yielded two significant factors: Spouse's Influence on Parenting and Positive View of Spouse. Paternal involvement was related to children's adaptive behavior, whereas negative changes in parent-child relationships predicted behavior problems. Mothers who experienced greater psychological symptomatology were less likely to utilize an attorney, which in turn predicted greater internalizing problems in their children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some psychodynamic aspects of felt parental alliance in young children.

"No attempt is made to generalize this projective alliance beyond the possibility that it reflects some form of felt alliance on the part of the child. It is the relationship of this felt alliance to other factors that is presented here, as a research finding needing further, more direct, study for any real generalization." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Welfare policies and very young children: Experimental data on stage-environment fit.

The authors examined the effects of welfare programs that increased maternal employment and family income on the development of very young children using data from 5 random-assignment experiments. The children were 6 months to 3 years old when their mothers entered the programs; cognitive and behavioral outcomes were measured 2?5 years later. While there were no overall program impacts, positive or negative, on the development of children in this age group, there was a pair of domain- and age-specific effects: The programs decreased positive social behavior among 1-year-olds and increased school achievement among 2-year-olds. After exploring several explanations for these results, the authors suggest that the contextual changes engendered by the programs, including children's exposure to center-based child care, interacted differentially with specific developmental transitions. (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)     

Anticipating parental death in families with young children

Voltage-activated currents from adult honey bee antennal motor neurons were characterized with in vitro studies in parallel with recordings taken from cells in situ. Two methods were used to ensure unequivocal identification of cells as antennal motor neurons: 1) selective backfilling of the neurons with fluorescent markers before dissociation for cell culture or before recording from cells in intact brains, semiintact brains, or in brain slices or 2) staining with a fluorescent marker via the patch pipette during recordings and identifying antennal motor neurons in situ on the basis of their characteristic morphology. Four voltage-activated currents were isolated in these antennal motor neurons with pharmacological, voltage, and ion substitution protocols. The neurons expressed at least two distinct K+ currents, a transient current (IA) that was blocked by 4-aminopyridine (4-5 x 10(-3) M), and a sustained current (IK(V)) that was partially blocked by tetraethylammonium (2-3 x 10(-2) M) and quinidine (5 x 10(-5) M). IA activated above -40 to -30 mV and the half-maximal voltages for steady-state activation and inactivation were -8.8 and -43.2 mV, respectively. IK(V) activated above -50 to -40 mV and the midpoint of the steady-state activation curve was +11.2 mV. IK(V) did not show steady-state inactivation. Additionally, two inward currents were isolated: a tetrodotoxin (10(-7) M)-sensitive, transient Na+ current (INa) that activated above -35 mV, with a maximum around -5 mV and a half-maximal voltage for inactivation of -72.6 mV, and a CdCl2 (5 x 10(-5) M)-sensitive Ca2+ current that activated above -45 to -40 mV, with a maximum around -15 mV. This study represents the first step in our effort to analyze the cellular and ionic mechanisms underlying the intrinsic properties and plasticity of antennal motor neurons.     

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)     

Working with children of divorce and their families.

In this article the author details issues relevant to clinicians working with children of divorce. Applicable areas to explore in psychotherapy with these children include loss, grief, abandonment, separation, trust, anger, and betrayal. A host of emotional difficulties may emerge for the child and parents subsequent to the divorce. This article provides general guidelines for treating children who experience divorce and uses continuous case examples for demonstration. In addition, challenges intrinsic to working with children of divorce and their parents are addressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Issues in the study of children and divorce.

Comments on J. B. Kelly's (see record 1989-25605-001) review of studies on the long-term adjustment of children with divorced parents by outlining contrasts between current conceptual and methodological practices and recommended practices in this area of study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of maternal functioning and parenting skills in adolescent functioning following parental divorce.

While divorce has been associated with impaired child functioning, the mechanisms within the divorce process leading to such an outcome have rarely been examined. The following hypothesis was examined: Divorce is associated with poor parental adjustment or disrupts parenting behavior, or both, which leads to poor adolescent functioning. Subjects were 121 and 93 young adolescents from intact and recently divorced families, respectively, and their mothers and teachers. Mothers completed measures assessing parental conflict and depression, observers coded parenting skills during a mother–adolescent interaction, and teachers completed measures assessing adolescent functioning. Although the magnitude of differences was not large, analyses of variance indicated that the divorced sample was functioning poorer than the married sample on all measures except interparental conflict. Path analysis suggested that parental functioning and parenting skills play a role in adolescent functioning following divorce. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further thoughts on longer-term adjustment in children of divorce.

Responds to comments by R. E. Emery, K. Kressel, L. A. Kurdek, and D. H. Sprenkle (see PA, Vol 76:25582, 25608, 25610, and 25642) regarding the present author's (see record 1989-25605-001) review of studies on children of divorced parents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Process analyses of the behavior of very young children in delay tasks.

Conducted 2 studies to examine the behavior of young children in tasks demanding self-control. In Study 1, 27 2-yr-olds were observed in 1 task. Behavior during the task was described using a 10-category coding system, and proportion scores derived from the 10-category coding system were correlated with total time in the task. Results show that 5 of the 10 correlations were significant. Behaviors bringing the goals into attention were negatively correlated with total delay time, whereas behaviors taking the goal out of attention tended to be positively associated with delay. In Study 2, 82 children (aged 24–36 mo) were observed in 3 delay tasks. The behavioral strategy studied was directing attention away from the goal object during delay periods. Significant effects were found for age and task type. When the sample was divided into shorter vs longer waiters, it was found that the longer waiters looked away from the goal for a larger proportion of the time. It is suggested that young children use implicit strategies for controlling their behavior in the face of a social demand. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)