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ABSTRACT: Offers a detailed exploration of linkages among SES, parenting, and child functioning during infancy. The author focus on 6 parenting processes as potential mediators of relations between SES and 5 aspects of infant behavior. Specifically, in a series of structural equation models, the authors look at relations between 2 major SES composite indices--the Hollingshead Four-Factor Index of Social Status and the Duncan Socioeconomic Index of Occupations--in relation to 6 parenting processes and 5 infant behavior outcomes. They then analyze the role of these 2 SES composites and also decompose each composite into its constituents (education, occupation, and income). The authors find that maternal education largely accounts for SES effects on child behavioral outcomes during infancy and that it does so through several parenting channels. They further delineate relations between SES and child behavior by including in their models several maternal factors with known relations to child outcomes: maternal age, intelligence, personality, and employment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
10/2012;
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ABSTRACT: Cultural variation in relations and moment-to-moment contingencies of infant-mother person-oriented and object-oriented interactions were compared in 118 Japanese, Japanese American immigrant, and European American dyads with 5.5-month-olds. Infant and mother person-oriented behaviors were related in all cultural groups, but infant and mother object-oriented behaviors were related only among European Americans. Infant and mother behaviors within each modality were mutually contingent in all groups. Culture moderated lead-lag relations: Japanese infants were more likely than their mothers to respond in object-oriented interactions; European American mothers were more likely than their infants to respond in person-oriented interactions. Japanese American dyads behaved like European American dyads. Interactions, infant effects, and parent socialization findings are set in cultural and accultural models of infant-mother transactions.
Child Development 08/2012; · 4.72 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Contingencies of three maternal and two infant socioemotional behaviors that are universal components of mother-infant interaction were investigated at 5 months in 62 mothers (31 who had adopted domestically and 31 who had given birth) and their first children (16 males in each group). Patterns of contingent responding were largely comparable in dyads by adoption and birth, although the two groups of mothers responded differentially to the two types of infant signals. Mothers in both groups were more responsive than infants in social and vocal interactions, but infants were more responsive in maternal speech-infant attention interactions. Family type × gender statistical interactions suggested a possible differential role of infant gender in establishing mother-infant contingencies in families by adoption and birth.
Infant behavior & development 06/2012; 35(3):499-508. · 1.34 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Two analytical procedures for identifying young children as categorizers, the Monte Carlo Simulation and the Probability Estimate Model, were compared. Using a sequential touching method, children aged 12, 18, 24, and 30 months were given seven object sets representing different levels of categorical classification. From their touching performance, the probability that children were categorizing was then determined independently using Monte Carlo Simulation and the Probability Estimate Model. The two analytical procedures resulted in different percentages of children being classified as categorizers. Results using the Monte Carlo Simulation were more consistent with group-level analyses than results using the Probability Estimate Model. These findings recommend using the Monte Carlo Simulation for determining individual categorizer classification.
Infant behavior & development 03/2011; 34(2):321-6. · 1.34 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A community sample of 262 European American mothers of firstborn 20-month-olds completed a personality inventory and measures of parenting cognitions (knowledge, self-perceptions, and reports about behavior) and was observed in interaction with their children from which measures of parenting practices (language, sensitivity, affection, and play) were independently coded. Factor analyses of the personality inventory replicated extraction of the 5-factor model of personality (Openness, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). When controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, the 5 personality factors qua variables and in patterns qua clusters related differently to diverse parenting cognitions and practices, supporting the multidimensional, modular, and specific nature of parenting. Maternal personality in the normal range, a theoretically important but empirically neglected factor in everyday parenting, has meaning in studies of parenting, child development, and family process.
Developmental Psychology 03/2011; 47(3):658-75. · 3.21 Impact Factor
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Infant Mental Health Journal 01/2011; 32(1):70 - 94. · 0.61 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Knowledge of child rearing and child development is relevant to parenting and the well-being of children. Using a sociodemographically heterogeneous sample of 268 European American mothers of 2-year-olds, we assessed the state of mothers' parenting knowledge; compared parenting knowledge in groups of mothers who varied in terms of parenthood and social status; and identified principal sources of mothers' parenting knowledge in terms of social factors, parenting supports, and formal classes. On the whole, European American mothers demonstrated fair but less than complete basic parenting knowledge; age, education, and rated helpfulness of written materials each uniquely contributed to mothers' knowledge. Adult mothers scored higher than adolescent mothers, and mothers improved in their knowledge of parenting from their first to their second child (and were stable across time). No differences were found between mothers of girls and boys, mothers who varied in employment status, or birth and adoptive mothers. The implications of variation in parenting knowledge and its sources for parenting education and clinical interactions with parents are discussed.
Developmental Psychology 11/2010; 46(6):1677-93. · 3.21 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study used a three-wave longitudinal design to investigate developmental cascades among social competence and externalizing and internalizing behavioral adjustment in a normative sample of 117 children seen at 4, 10, and 14 years. Children, mothers, and teachers provided data. A series of nested path analysis models was used to determine the most parsimonious and plausible cascades across the three constructs over and above their covariation at each age and stability across age. Children with lower social competence at age 4 years exhibited more externalizing and internalizing behaviors at age 10 years and more externalizing behaviors at age 14 years. Children with lower social competence at age 4 years also exhibited more internalizing behaviors at age 10 years and more internalizing behaviors at age 14 years. Children who exhibited more internalizing behaviors at age 4 years exhibited more internalizing behaviors at age 10 years and more externalizing behaviors at age 14 years. These cascades among social competence and behavioral adjustment obtained independent of child intelligence and maternal education and social desirability of responding.
Development and Psychopathology 11/2010; 22(4):717-35. · 4.40 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Cultural variation in durations, relations, and contingencies of mother-infant person-and object-directed behaviors were examined for 121 nonmigrant Latino mother-infant dyads in South America, Latina immigrants from South America and their infants living in the United States, and European American mother-infant dyads. Nonmigrant Latina mothers and infants engaged in person-directed behaviors longer than Latino immigrant or European American mothers and infants. Mother and infant person-directed behaviors were positively related; mother and infant object-related behaviors were related for some cultural groups but not others. Nearly all mother and infant behaviors were mutually contingent. Mothers were more responsive to infants' behaviors than infants were to mothers. Some cultural differences in responsiveness emerged. Immigrant status has a differentiated role in mother-infant interactions.
Infancy 07/2008; 13(4):338-365. · 1.73 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Responsiveness defines the prompt, contingent, and appropriate reactions parents display to their children in the context of everyday exchanges. Maternal responsiveness occupies a theoretically central position in developmental science and possesses meaningful predictive validity over diverse domains of children's development, yet basic psychometric features of maternal responsiveness are still poorly understood. In this prospective longitudinal study, the authors examined structure, individual variation, and continuity of multiple dimensions of responsiveness in 40 mothers to their infants' activities at 10, 14, and 21 months during natural home-based play interactions. Both age-general and age-specific patterns emerged in maternal responding. The study's developmental results support the multidimensionality, modularity, and specificity of this central parenting construct.
Developmental Psychology 06/2008; 44(3):867-74. · 3.21 Impact Factor
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01/2008: pages 509 - 533; , ISBN: 9780470756676
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ABSTRACT: This study examined unique associations of multiple distal context variables (family socioeconomic status [SES], maternal employment, and paternal parenting) and proximal maternal (personality, intelligence, and knowledge; behavior, self-perceptions, and attributions) and child (age, gender, representation, language, and sociability) characteristics with maternal sensitivity and child responsiveness in 254 European American mothers and their firstborn 20-month-olds. Specific unique relations emerged in hierarchical regression analyses. Mothers who worked fewer hours per week and reported less dissonance in their husbands' didactic parenting, whose children spoke using more vocabulary, and who reported less limit setting in their parenting and attributed their parenting failures to internal causes were observed to be more sensitive in their interactions with their children. Children in higher SES families, whose mothers worked fewer hours and attributed their parenting failures to internal causes, and who themselves used more vocabulary were observed to be more responsive in their interactions with their mothers. Although potential associations are many, when considered together, unique associations with maternal sensitivity and child responsiveness are few, and some are shared whereas others are unique.
Infancy 08/2007; 12(2):189 - 223. · 1.73 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Children confront the formidable task of assimilating information in the environment and accommodating their cognitive structures to that information. Developmental science is concerned equally with two distinctive features of these processes: children's group mean level of performance through time and the standing of individual children through time. Prevailing opinion since the inception of the mental-measurement movement has been that individual development is unstable-that individual children change unpredictably in their abilities. We report results of a large-scale controlled, multivariate, prospective, microgenetic, 4-year longitudinal study that reveals a statistically significant cascade of species-typical cognitive abilities from infancy to childhood. Infancy is a recognizable starting point of life; we find that to a small but significant degree, infancy also represents a setting point in the life of the individual.
Psychological Science 03/2006; 17(2):151-8. · 4.43 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: We explored vocabulary competence in 55 firstborn and secondborn sibling pairs when each child reached 1;8 using multiple measures of maternal report, child speech, and experimenter assessment. Measures from each of the three sources were interrelated. Firstborns' vocabulary competence exceeded secondborns' only in maternal reports, not in child speech or in experimenter assessments. Firstborn girls outperformed boys on all vocabulary competence measures, and secondborn girls outperformed boys on most measures. Vocabulary competence was independent of the gender composition and, generally, of the age difference in sibling pairs. Vocabulary competence in firstborns and secondborns was only weakly related.
Journal of Child Language 12/2004; 31(4):855-73. · 1.41 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: We explored vocabulary competence in 55 firstborn and secondborn sibling pairs when each child reached 1;8 using multiple measures of maternal report, child speech, and experimenter assessment. Measures from each of the three sources were interrelated. Firstborns' vocabulary competence exceeded secondborns' only in maternal reports, not in child speech or in experimenter assessments. Firstborn girls outperformed boys on all vocabulary competence measures, and secondborn girls outperformed boys on most measures. Vocabulary competence was independent of the gender composition and, generally, of the age difference in sibling pairs. Vocabulary competence in firstborns and secondborns was only weakly related.
Journal of Child Language 10/2004; 31(04):855 - 873. · 1.41 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Fetal cardiac function was measured at 24, 30, and 36 weeks gestation and quantified in terms of heart rate, variability, and episodic accelerations. Children's representational capacity was evaluated at 27 months in terms of language and play. Thirty- and 36-wcek-old fetuses that displayed greater heart-rate variability and more episodic accelerations, and fetuses that exhibited a more precipitous increase in heart-rate variability and acceleration over gestation achieved higher levels of language competence. Thirty-six-week-old fetuses with higher heart-rate variability and accelerations, and steeper growth trajectories over gestation, achieved higher levels of symbolic play. Cardiac patterning during gestation may reflect an underlying neural substrate that persists through early childhood: Individual variation in rate of development could be stable, or efficient cardiac function could positively influence the underlying neural substrate to enhance cognitive performance.
Infancy 09/2002; 3(4):475 - 494. · 1.73 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: We systematically examined relations among 6 measures of child language derived from 3 sources, including observations of the child's speech with mother, experimenter assessments, and maternal reports. A total of 184 20-month-olds and their mothers contributed complete information about child language comprehension and expression. Correlations of child language measures with socioeconomic status and maternal education were accounted for, as were correlations of child language measures with mothers' verbal intelligence, maternal report measures with mothers' tendency to respond in a socially desirable fashion, and experimenter assessments with child social competence. Structural equation modeling supported (1) strong relations among child language measures derived from observations of the child's speech with mother, experimenter assessments, and maternal reports; (2) the loading of multiple measures of child language from different sources on a single latent construct of vocabulary competence; and (3) the predictive validity of the vocabulary competence latent variable at 20 months, as well as receptive vocabulary specifically, for both verbal and performance IQ (verbal better than performance) at 48 months. Neither an index of child monologing (a nonvocabulary language measure) nor symbolic play (a nonlinguistic representational measure) covaried with vocabulary competence. Girls consistently outperformed boys on individual language measures, but no differences emerged in any model in the fit for boys and girls.
Child Development 05/1998; 69(3):654 - 671. · 4.72 Impact Factor
