Multivariate models of mothers' and fathers' aggression toward their children.

Multivariate, biopsychosocial, explanatory models of mothers' and fathers' psychological and physical aggression toward their 3- to 7-year-old children were fitted and cross-validated in 453 representatively sampled families. Models explaining mothers' and fathers' aggression were substantially similar. Surprisingly, many variables identified as risk factors in the parental aggression and physical child abuse literatures, such as income, unrealistic expectations, and alcohol problems, although correlated with aggression bivariately, did not contribute uniquely to the models. In contrast, a small number of variables (i.e., child responsible attributions, overreactive discipline style, anger expression, and attitudes approving of aggression) appeared to be important pathways to parent aggression, mediating the effects of more distal risk factors. Models accounted for a moderate proportion of the variance in aggression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-cultural comparison of personality in adults and children: Singapore and England.

493 men (mean age 28.24 yrs) and 501 women (mean age 26.65 yrs) in Singapore completed the adult Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). Similarly, 250 Singapore boys (mean age 13.14 yrs) and 508 girls (mean age 13.28 yrs) completed the Junior EPQ. Correlations between items were calculated for men and women, boys and girls separately. Factor analyses were performed on the resulting matrices, and indices of factor comparison were calculated for all 4 groups, comparing the factors extracted and rotated with similar factors from the original British standardizations. All the indices were high (.91) for the children and even higher (.96) for the adults. It is concluded that similar personality dimensions are to be found in the 2 countries. Findings support the idea that the dimensions of neuroticism, psychoticism, and extraversion are of universal applicability. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moral norms and social conventions: A cross-cultural comparison.

60 boys and 60 girls in the 1st and 4th grades in Israel were interviewed to examine the distinction between moral and conventional norms. Ss were equally divided between 3 groups: secular urban Jews, secular kibbutz Jews, and traditional Arab villagers. Ss were presented with 8 behaviors, all breaches of moral or conventional norms. Two of them dealt with norms strongly observed by the traditional but not by the other groups and 2 with norms central to the kibbutz. Ss were asked the extent to which the behavior was bad (or good) in a country where (a) it was prohibited and (b) it was permitted. They were also asked whether it should be forbidden by law, and why. City and kibbutz Ss did not differ in their judgments, even in regard to behaviors emphasized in the kibbutz. Compared with these groups, the traditional group judged all behaviors as bad even when permitted; they thought all should be prohibited by law and their justifications tended to be in normative terms. Results are interpreted in terms of 2 distinct orientations to social norms: one where the criteria for social judgment of behaviors and norms are consequences to others and law, and the other where social norms are considered to have absolute validity and constitute the dominant criterion for moral judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's responses to mothers' and fathers' emotionality and tactics in marital conflict in the home.

Addressing a gap in methodological approaches to the study of links between marital conflict and children, 51 couples were trained to complete home diary reports on everyday marital conflicts and children's responses. Parental negative emotionality and destructive conflict tactics related to children's insecure emotional and behavioral responses. Parental positive emotionality and constructive conflict tactics were linked with children's secure emotional responding. When parents' emotions and tactics were considered in the same model, negative emotionality was more consistently related to children's negative reactions than were destructive conflict tactics, whereas constructive conflict tactics were more consistently related to children's positive reactions than parents' positive emotionality. Differences in children's responding as a function of specific parental negative emotions (anger, sadness, fear) and parent gender were identified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adolescent mothers' cognitions and behaviors as at-risk indicators.

Examined how qualities of adolescent mothers (AMs) are related to their child's socioemotional development and the relationship between maternal characteristics and the AM's ratings of her child's behavior. Ss included 39 AMs (mean age 17.9 yrs) and their children (aged 4–22 mo). Multiple measures of parental characteristics were used, including self-report measures of parenting expectations and mood orientation, and a qualitative behavioral measure of involvement. Analyses compared these measures with ratings of the child's coping behavior by trained observers and mothers' ratings of their child using the Parenting Stress Index (PSI). Findings indicate that parenting expectations had a unique and differential power in explaining both objective child observation ratings and the mothers' PSI ratings of their children. Interactions involving maternal positive behavior were related significantly to mothers' PSI ratings of the child's acceptability or reinforcement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consistency of mothers' behavior toward infant siblings.

Examined how similarly mothers behave toward infant siblings in 50 families in which mothers were videotaped while interacting with each of 2 siblings when each child was 12 mo old. The average age difference between siblings was 35 mo. Maternal behavior was assessed from the videotapes during feeding and free play. Factor analysis yielded 3 factors: Affection, Verbal Attention, and Control. Results indicate that the mothers behaved very similarly toward their 2 siblings at the same age in infancy: The consistency of maternal behavior toward the siblings approached the reliability of the measures. Although results might differ for older children, and for siblings of different ages, the data suggest that differential maternal treatment of children of the same age in infancy is unlikely to be a major source of the marked individual differences that have been observed within pairs of siblings. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of mothers' and fathers' adrenocortical reactivity in spillover between interparental conflict and parenting practices.

Guided by the affective spillover hypothesis, the present study examined the mediational role of parental adrenocortical reactivity to interparental conflict in explaining associations between interparental conflict and subsequent changes in mothers' and fathers' parenting practices over a 2-year period in a sample of 202 parents and their 6-year-old children. Results of autoregressive path models indicated that marital withdrawal was associated with increases in adrenocortical reactivity to conflict for mothers but not fathers. Furthermore, elevated adrenocortical reactivity in turn predicted greater psychologically controlling parenting practices and inconsistent discipline over time for mothers, but was not associated with changes in maternal warmth. Implications for clinicians and therapists working with maritally distressed parents and families are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors affecting allocation to needy and meritorious recipients: A cross-cultural comparison.

Examined the effect of culture (India vs the US), sex of allocator, sex of allocation target, the positive or negative value of the allocation, and the short- or long-term impact of the allocation decision on respondents' distribution of money to a hypothetical recipient. 53 Indian male, 44 Indian female, 40 US male, and 44 US female undergraduates served as Ss. Results reveal that Indian Ss distributed more on the basis of need and less on the basis of merit or equality than did the Americans. Also, the Indian males and the American males and females distributed more to the needy recipient and less to the meritorious recipient when money cutbacks rather than rewards were involved. Indian females, on the other hand, gave most to the needy in all cases. Findings support the idea that perceptions of fairness are culturally relative and bound to specific socialization practices and societal norms. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Invariance and convergent and discriminant validity between mothers' and fathers' ratings of oppositional defiant disorder toward adults, ADHD-HI, ADHD-IN, and academic competence factors within Brazilian, Thai, and American children.

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the invariance of an oppositional defiant disorder toward adults, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-hyperactivity/impulsivity, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-inattention, and an Academic Competence factor model between mothers' and fathers' ratings within Brazilian (n = 894), Thai (n = 2,075), and American (n = 817) children with the Child and Adolescent Disruptive Behavior Inventory (G. L. Burns, T. Taylor, & J. Rusby, 2001a, 2001b). The results showed invariance of item loadings, intercepts, and residuals, as well as factor variances, covariances, and means between mothers' and fathers' ratings within each sample. Convergent and discriminant validity was also observed for the between-parent factor correlations, thus providing additional support for the construct validity of the Child and Adolescent Disruptive Behavior Inventory. The confirmatory factor analysis invariance procedure provides a much better way to examine between-source ratings of behavior problems in children than do the simple correlation and raw discrepancy score procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Type A behaviors for children, social comparison, and standards for self-evaluation.

Assessed the impact of performance standards on the social comparison behaviors of 40 Type A and Type B (as determined by the Matthews Youth Test for Health) 4th graders. Ss performed a 5-trial task. Half were given an explicit standard by which to evaluate their performance prior to each trial; half were given no standard. In between trials, Ss could compare their performance with that of hypothetical coactors, and the frequency of their comparisons were recorded. After 5 trials, all Ss were informed that their total score represented the middle score of the tested Ss and were asked to select 1 score for further examination. Results show no significant differences among groups on the frequency of comparisons. In contrast, results did show that regardless of the presence or absence of an explicit standard, Type A Ss chose to evaluate their performance against the top scoring coactor, whereas Type B Ss chose to do so only in the absence of an explicit standard. The implications of these results for understanding the childhood antecedents of Pattern A are discussed. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Internal versus external control and ethnic group membership: A cross-cultural comparison.

To investigate a relationship between internal vs. external control and ethnic group membership, 3 groups of high school Ss (Chinese, American-born Chinese, and Anglo-American) were compared in their responses to the Internal-External Control Scale. A hypothesis that a belief in internal vs. external control is significantly related to ethnic group membership was confirmed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nonverbal communication: A cross-cultural comparison of American and Japanese counseling students.

Examined the nonverbal acuity of mental health professionals from 2 countries in a cross-cultural study. A nonverbal picture test that measures recognition of affective states was administered to 47 American and 36 Japanese counseling students. The 120-item instrument, devised for a previous study, consisted of posed pictures of American-born graduate students representing 15 specific emotions. The pictures and cuts of pictures contained 4 sections of the body—face, arms, silhouette of body posture (with the facial expression obscured), and whole body. Emotional state labels selected by Ss in this study were compared with the answers previously designated by a panel of American judges of nonverbal information. Thus, the score attained by an S was the number of correct matches with the American judges. Results from the total nonverbal test score show that (a) females were more accurate in judging nonverbal cues than males and (b) American Ss had a higher accuracy rate than Japanese Ss. Results on the 30-item subtest of facial expressions are examined. The ranking of emotional states for each group by number of correct responses yields a fairly similar list. The resulting recognition of emotions from facial pictures is compared to findings from a previous cross-cultural study. Implications regarding cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural counseling interactions are discussed, as are suggestions for further research. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental communication deviance and schizophrenia: A cross-cultural comparison of Mexican- and Anglo-Americans.

Levels of parental communication deviance (CD), as measured on the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), were compared among families of schizophrenic patients in two culturally distinct groups. Spanish-speaking Mexican-American parents of schizophrenics completed the TAT in their native language, and CD was coded from their stories by a Spanish-speaking rater. Mexican-American parents had levels of CD that were nearly identical to those of a carefully matched sample of English-speaking Anglo-American parents. Factor scores that measure distinct subtypes of CD also did not differ across groups. The data suggest that levels of CD, despite discriminating between parents of schizophrenics and nonschizophrenics, do not vary across different languages and cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging mothers' and their adult daughters' perceptions of conflict behaviors.

Aging parents tend to perceive greater compatibility between themselves and offspring than do offspring, but there is little research examining differences in perceptions of conflicts. Ninety-six older mothers (M age?=?76) and their daughters (M age?=?44) together selected a conflictual incident, then individually rated the degree to which they and the other person had engaged in destructive, constructive, or avoidant conflict behaviors. Mothers and daughters reported using constructive approaches more than other approaches. Mothers claimed to engage in constructive behaviors more than daughters recognized. Daughters reported engaging in destructive and avoidant behaviors more than mothers realized. Mothers also thought daughters felt better about the incident than daughters reported feeling about it. Findings suggest older mothers' underestimate daughters' negative behaviors and feelings in conflict situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-cultural comparison of depressive symptom manifestation: China and the United States.

This study compared depressive symptomatology among Chinese psychiatric outpatients versus the general Chinese population, and across 3 cultural groups—Chinese, Chinese American, and Caucasian American students—by use of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D; L. S. Radloff, 1977) and the Chinese Depression Scale (N. Lin, 1989), translated from the CES-D. Results indicate that Chinese patients (n?=?112) endorsed a higher proportion of somatic symptoms than nonpatients (n?=?112). The intercultural comparison found that Chinese students (n?=?98) had the lowest levels of somatic depressive symptom endorsement compared to both U.S. groups (n?=?198). These findings seem to suggest that the tendency toward somatic symptom reporting is not any greater among Chinese populations but may be a function of having a mental illness or of help seeking in China. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differences in attitudes toward sex-typed behavior of nonretarded and retarded children

The present study was an initial attempt at understanding gender constancy in retarded children. Stories about retarded or nonretarded boys or girls were given to teachers and caretakers of retarded children and teachers of nonretarded children. The stories described children in four sex-stereotyped activities. Respondents rated each child in the stories on scales of typicality and acceptability. Results indicated that, while nonretarded children were rated as typical when engaging in sex-appropriate, desirable play activities, retarded children were rated as typical when engaging in undesirable activities, regardless of sex appropriateness. Different professional groups appeared to use different criteria when judging the children in the stories.     

Validating the Children's Behavior Questionnaire in Dutch children: Psychometric properties and a cross-cultural comparison of factor structures.

In this article, we examined the factorial validity of the Dutch translation of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ) and the Very Short Form scores. In addition, we conducted cross-cultural comparisons of temperament structure. In total, 353 parents of 6- to 8-year-olds completed the instrument. The original higher order factor structure of the different CBQ forms was generally replicated and represented the three broad dimensions of temperament: Surgency/Extraversion, Negative Affectivity, and Effortful Control. For the Standard Form, results demonstrated a relatively high degree of factor similarity of the Dutch sample with other cultures (e.g., China and Japan). The findings provide evidence for applicability of the CBQ in Western Europe as a promising instrument to comprehensively assess reactive and self-regulative temperamental dimensions in young children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aspects of social reputation and peer relationships in Italian children: A cross-cultural perspective.

A group of Italian children (790 boys and 717 girls), 10–13 years old, were administered the Revised Class Play (Masten, Morison, & Pellegrini, 1985) in order to explore cross-cultural differences in social reputation with respect to North American studies. Children also were given sociometric nominations to examine the association between social reputation and peer acceptance–rejection. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed a 4-factor structure with the original Leadership-Sociability factor split in 2 separate dimensions: leadership and sociability. Leadership items seemed to draw a profile of a well-behaved, polite, and socially correct child, whereas Sociability items seemed to draw a profile of a child that is sociable, liked, exuberant, and ready to make friends and to interact with others. Moreover, the data suggested somewhat subtle forms of association between Aggression and Sociability. Results on relations between peer acceptance–rejection and social reputation confirmed North American findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers' and fathers' perceptions of child deviance: Roles of parent and child behaviors and parent adjustment.

The mothers (n?=?120) and fathers (n?=?85) of children with conduct problems (ages?=?3–8 years) completed two measures of child adjustment (Child Behavior Checklist, Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory), three personal adjustment measures (Beck Depression Inventory, Marital Adjustment Test, Parenting Stress Index), and a Life Experience Survey and were observed at home interacting with their children. In addition, teachers (n?=?107) completed the Behar Preschool Questionnaire. Fathers' perceptions of their children's behaviors were significantly correlated with teachers' ratings, but mothers' ratings were not. Correlations showed that mothers who were depressed or stressed due to marital problems perceived more child deviant behaviors and interacted with their children with more commands and criticisms. Fathers' perceptions and behaviors were relatively unaffected by personal adjustment measures. Differences in these perceptions and behaviors between mothers and fathers are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)