Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire—Revised: Psychometric examination.

This study examines the psychometric properties of the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire—Revised (CASQ–R; N. J. Kaslow & S. Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991), a 24-item shortened measure derived from the 48-item CASQ designed to assess children's causal explanations for positive and negative events. The data for this study come from 1,086 children, 9 to 12 years old, with equal representation of boys and girls and African American and Caucasian children. Approximately one half (n?=?475) of the youths also completed the CASQ–R 6 months later. Results revealed that although the CASQ-R was somewhat less reliable than the original CASQ, with moderate internal consistency reliability and fair test-retest reliability, it demonstrated equivalent criterion-related validity with self-reported depressive symptoms. Psychometric properties of the CASQ-R showed some variation by race, such that the overall composite demonstrated better internal consistency and criterion-related validity among Caucasian youths than among African American youths. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Relations of Parental Expressivity and Support to Children's Coping With Daily Stress.

The relations of parents' emotional expressivity, mothers' support, and children's daily stress to children's constructive coping were examined in a sample of ninety-four 7- to 12-year-old children. For 2 weeks, children, together with their mothers, completed daily diaries of their stressful events. Mothers and fathers reported on their expression of positive, negative submissive, and negative dominant emotion. Although fathers' expressivity was not related to children's constructive coping, mothers' expression of negative emotion, particularly negative dominant emotion, was negatively related to children's constructive coping. Children's stress was negatively related to their constructive coping, and this relation was stronger for children exposed to low levels of parents' positive emotion and mothers' expression of negative submissive emotion. Children's constructive coping was positively related to mothers' supportive strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differences in early parent-child conversations about negative versus positive emotions: Implications for the development of psychological understanding.

The authors examined whether the quality and content of everyday parent-child conversations about negative emotions are the same or different from everyday talk about positive emotions. Extensive longitudinal speech samples of 6 children and their parents were analyzed for several critical features when the children were between 2 and 5 years of age. Results showed that children and parents talked about past emotions, the causes of emotions, and connections between emotions and other mental states at higher rates during conversations about negative emotions than during conversations about positive emotions. Discourse about negative emotions also included a larger emotion vocabulary, more openended questions, and more talk about other people. These differences appeared before the children's 3rd birthdays and remained consistent through the preschool years. The findings strengthen and clarify current understanding of young children's articulation and knowledge about people's minds, lives, and emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal Structure and Autonomy Support in Conversations About the Past: Contributions to Children's Autobiographical Memory.

The authors examined the contributions of maternal structure and autonomy support to children's collaborative and independent reminiscing. Fifty mother-child dyads discussed past experiences when the children were 40 and 65 months old. Children also discussed past events with an experimenter at each age. Maternal structure and autonomy support appeared as 2 distinct and separable components of mothers' reminiscing style and acted in an additive fashion to predict children's memory. Children whose mothers demonstrated both high structure and high autonomy support provided the greatest memory in these conversations, whereas children whose mothers were low on both dimensions provided minimal memory. The authors discuss the implications of these effects for children's autobiographical memory development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developing narrative structure in parent–child reminiscing across the preschool years.

This study is a longitudinal exploration of relations between parents' and children's provision of narrative structure in joint retellings of the past and children's developing personal narrative skills. 15 White, middle-class families participated when children were 40 and 70 mo old. At both ages, mothers and fathers talked separately with children about shared past events and uninformed experimenters elicited children's personal narratives. Whereas mothers and fathers did not differ in how they structured past narratives, children narrated differently with fathers than with mothers. Further, even at 40 mo, girls' narratives were more contexted and evaluative than boys', but parents' provision of narrative structure increased similarly with daughters and sons over time. Children's early abilities to provide evaluative narratives was a strong predictor of their later abilities to provide evaluative narratives; maternal emphasis on evaluations also predicted children's later narrative structure. Parental and child influences on personal narrative skill development are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment and representations of peer relationships.

Three studies explored the connection between attachment and peer-related representations. Children heard stories in which a peer with ambiguous intent caused a negative event. Study 1 examined three aspects of peer-related representations in 3.5-yr-olds: representations of (1) peer intent, (2) behavioral responses to the event, and (3) peer feelings. Children's representations of the mother's response to the event were also examined. Study 2 examined the connection between attachment and the same aspects of peer-related representations in kindergarten and 1st-grade children. The proposition implicit in attachment theory that it is children's representations of peer relationships that in part account for the connection between child–parent attachment and relations with peers was also tested. Study 3 focused on representations of peer intent in connection with self-reported maternal and paternal rejection in 5th graders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's recollections of traumatic and nontraumatic events

Whereas the social and emotional consequences of childhood trauma are well documented, less is known about how young children understand, represent, and remember traumatic experiences. A review of the literature indicates striking similarities in the development of young children's ability to recall traumatic and nontraumatic events. More specifically, events experienced before the age of about 18 months do not seem to be verbally accessible; events experienced between about 18 months and 2.5-3 years are reported in fragmentary fashion and seem to be prone to increasing error over time. From about age 3 years on, children can give reasonably coherent accounts of their past experiences and can retain these memories over long durations. The ways in which children are able to participate in conversations about events as they are occurring and in retrospect seems to play a critical role in their developing event memories. Implications of the empirical data for understanding trauma memory in childhood are discussed.     

Masculinity and femininity in children: Development of the Children's Personal Attributes Questionnaire.

Achildren's version of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire was developed and employed with 89 elementary school children. This instrument, which has long and short forms, assesses masculinity (instrumentality) and femininity (socioemotional orientation) on separate unipolar dimensions and also contains a bipolar Femininity–Masculinity scale. Equivalence of the children's forms with the long and short adult forms was demonstrated. In addition to psychometric data, evidence for the construct validity of the children's instrument is presented. Children's self-ratings correlated positively with parents' ratings. Gender differences agreed with expectations. The proportions of children of 4 gender-role types were similar to those reported among high school students who used the adult form; Correlations with intellectual ability were not strong. Children's positive self-concept was associated with more masculine responding. Longitudinal analyses showed differential change in directions consistent with the social desirability of masculine and feminine attributes. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Origins of autobiographical memory.

This study tested the predictions of M. L. Howe and M. L. Courage's (1993, 1997) theory of infantile amnesia compared with a social-interactionist account of autobiographical memory development (R. Fivush and E. Reese, 1992; K. Nelson, 1993b). Fifty-eight mother–child dyads were assessed for maternal styles of talking about the past and for children's self-recognition, language production, and nonverbal memory when the children were 19 months old. Children's shared and independent memory reports were then assessed from 19 to 32 months. Maternal reminiscing style and self-recognition uniquely predicted children's shared memory reports across time, even with children's initial language and nonverbal memory factored out. Self-recognition skills also predicted children's later independent memory. These results support a pluralistic account of the origins of autobiographical memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative cognitive errors in children: Questionnaire development, normative data, and comparisons between children with and without self-reported symptoms of depression, low self-esteem, and evaluation anxiety.

Constructed a self-report questionnaire, Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire (CNCEQ), to measure in children 4 types of negative cognitive errors derived from A. T. Beck's (1967, 1976) cognitive theory of adult depression: (a) overgeneralized predictions of negative outcomes, (b) catastrophizing the consequences of negative events, (c) incorrectly taking personal responsibility for negative outcomes, and (d) selectively attending to negative features of an event. Results from administration of the CNCEQ to a normative sample of 637 4th-, 6th-, and 8th-grade children showed that in general these Ss did not endorse any of the 4 types of negative thoughts to any large extent. However, 3 subsequent studies, using 201 of the Ss in the normative sample and 211 other 4th–8th grade children, indicated that Ss with self-reported symptoms of depression, low self-esteem, and evaluation anxiety (according to a children's depression inventory, the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale, and a test anxiety scale) endorsed each type of negative cognitive error significantly more than did their nondepressed, high self-esteem, and non-evaluation-anxious counterparts. (55 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mother-child participation in conversation about the past: relationships to preschoolers' theory of mind

Forty 3.5 to 4.5-year-olds discussed 3 past events with their mothers and completed a set of theory of mind tasks indexing their ability to reason about conflicting mental representations and their understanding of knowledge. Semipartial correlations and analyses of covariance showed that children's theory of mind scores were related to their participation in memory conversations, independent of age and linguistic skill. The frequency with which mothers provided new information was related to children's theory of mind scores, although mothers' direct replies to children were generally unrelated to children's understanding of mind. This research takes an important step toward examining the relevance of theory of mind skills to real-world, social interaction. The results have implications for explaining the emergence of autobiographical memory.     

Observations of Aggressive Children During Peer Provocation and With a Best Friend.

Observational methods were used to examine aggressive children's peer relations in 2 contexts: when being teased by a peer and when interacting with a best friend. Because aggressive children may have more difficulty than nonaggressive children in both peer contexts, the authors also examined whether relations between behaviors across contexts varied as a function of aggression. Results indicated that aggression was related to children's behavior when provoked. Children's behavior when provoked was associated with fewer positive and more negative interactions with their best friend, particularly for aggressive children. Results are discussed with respect to social norms in middle childhood and informing interventions for aggressive children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mother–child participation in conversation about the past: Relationships to preschoolers' theory of mind.

Forty 3.5- to 4.5-year-olds discussed 3 past events with their mothers and completed a set of theory of mind tasks indexing their ability to reason about conflicting mental representations and their understanding of knowledge. Semipartial correlations and analyses of covariance showed that children's theory of mind scores were related to their participation in memory conversations, independent of age and linguistic skill. The frequency with which mothers provided new information was related to children's theory of mind scores, although mothers' direct replies to children were generally unrelated to children's understanding of mind. This research takes an important step toward examining the relevance of theory of mind skills to real-world, social interaction. The results have implications for explaining the emergence of autobiographical memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's achievement attributions and self-reinforcement: Effects of self-concept and competitive reward structure.

Studied how self-concept as a dispositional trait influences children's achievement attributions and reinforcing behaviors in the social context of a competing or a noncompeting other. 112 5th-grade boys and girls classified as high or low in self-concept (Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale) worked in pairs at an achievement-related task in which one succeeded and one failed. Results show that high self-concept children attributed success outcomes more to their high ability and engaged in more positive self-reinforcement following success than did low self-concept children. The affective significance of achievement outcomes was accentuated in competitive settings for high but not low self-concept children. The results are discussed in terms of an attribution model of behavior. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The motivational and emotional consequences of considering positive or negative possibilities for an upcoming event.

The hypothesis that attention to negative possibilities for an upcoming event can have advantages for performance in comparison with a more optimistic approach was examined in 2 studies. Focus of attention to positive or negative possibilities for a social interaction was manipulated for Ss previously identified as optimists or defensive pessimists in the social domain. In Study 1, negatively focused defensive pessimists performed better in their conversations than positively focused defensive pessimists on several dimensions (e.g., talk time, perceived effort, and sociability). Optimists' behavior was unaffected by the focus manipulation. However, all negatively focused Ss felt worse after their conversations than did positively focused Ss. Study 2 examined the cognitive process by which a negative focus may lead to positive behaviors. Some pessimists may benefit from an initial negative focus that is not accompanied by lowered expectations and that actually facilitates positive thoughts about the self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of young children's reading self-concepts: An examination of emerging subcomponents and their relationship with reading achievement.

Development of reading self-concept in young children was examined in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 revealed a negative item response phenomenon similar to that reported by H. W. Marsh (see record 1986-11523-001), who found that children's responses to negative items on a self-concept scale were inconsistent with their responses to positive items. In Experiment 2, developmental psycholinguistic factors were considered in an effort to eliminate the negative item response phenomenon by changing the wording and presentation of the items. Experiment 3 suggested that reading self-concept may be defined as comprising three subcomponents: perceptions of competence in reading, perceptions of difficulty with reading, and attitudes toward reading. Experiment 4 showed how the relations among these subcomponents change with increasing age and how they relate to the development of reading and reading-related skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A longitudinal study of children's depressive symptoms, self-perceptions, and cognitive distortions about the self.

This longitudinal study examined how depressive symptoms relate to children's self-perceptions and to estimates of children's cognitive distortions about the self in a nonclinical sample of children who were followed from 4th grade (n=248) through 6th grade (n=227). Report card grades measured children's academic competence, and teachers' ratings of children's level of peer acceptance at school indicated social acceptance. Self-reported depressive symptoms predicted a change in children's negative views of the self. Moreover, the self-perceptions of children who exhibited more symptoms of depression appeared to reflect an underestimation of their actual competence. Children's negative self-perceptions and underestimations about the self were not associated with a subsequent change in depressive symptoms. The implications of the findings for cognitive theories of depression and future research with this population are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related changes in verbal and nonverbal memory during early childhood.

In the present experiment, age-related changes in verbal and nonverbal memory performance by 2- to 4-year-old children were assessed. All children participated in the same unique event, and their memory of that event was assessed after a 24-hr delay. Overall, children's performance on each memory measure increased as a function of age. Furthermore, children's performance on both the verbal and nonverbal memory tests was related to their language ability; children with more advanced language skills reported more during the verbal interview and exhibited superior nonverbal memory relative to children with less advanced language skills. Finally, children's verbal recall of the event lagged behind both their nonverbal recall and their general verbal skill. It is hypothesized that despite large strides in language acquisition, preschool-age children continue to rely primarily on nonverbal representations of past events. The findings have important implications for the phenomenon of childhood amnesia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's emotions as organizers of their reactions to interadult anger: A functionalist perspective.

Children's emotions have been implicated as mediating their responses to interadult anger, but this proposition has not been directly tested. Sixty-four 4–8 year olds (32 boys and 32 girls) were induced to feel angry, sad, happy, or "just okay" before their exposure to interadult anger. Data were analyzed by means of (a) analyses of variance testing differences across conditions and (b) correlations between children's emotions during affect induction procedures and their reactions to interadult anger. Findings indicated that negative emotions increased children's distress and negative appraisals and expectations in reaction to interadult anger, whereas positive emotions reduced distress reactions and increased children's positive expectations about future interadult interactions. The results support a functionalist view that emotions can play a causal role in organizing and directing children's reactions to events and are consistent with research and theory highlighting the role of emotionality in children's coping with marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)