Alison Pike

• Lecturer at University of Sussex

Objective. Observations of parents with their children are important for better understanding the critical role that parents play in their children’s adjustment, but resource limitations commonly compromise assessment. A novel online observation tool, Etch-a-Sketch Online (ESO), is introduced that allows resource-efficient observations in the famil...

Objectives: Anxiety runs in families, and its transmission is largely environmental. However, studies rarely explore this process in clinically anxious parents or ask participants to face a genuine fear. We also do not know whether this process is modifiable. This study will explore these questions using a sample of clinically anxious parents. De...

We examined the influences of culture, maternal malaise, household chaos, and both family-wide and child-specific aspects of parenting on children’s adjustment in a socioeconomically diverse sample of 118 English and 100 Turkish families. Each family included two children aged 4-8 years, enabling the separation of within- and between-family factors...

Links between positive and negative aspects of the parent-child relationship and child adjustment are undisputed. Scholars recognize the importance of parental differential treatment (PDT) of siblings, yet, less is known about PDT in the context of the shared (family-wide) parent-child relationship climate, or about the extent to which positivity m...

We investigated the association between maternal expressed emotion and twin relationship quality, after controlling for a maternal questionnaire measure of the mother–child relationship. This was explored within a community sample of 156 mothers and their two young twin children ( Mchild age = 3.69 years; SDchild age = 0.37). Mothers reported on th...

Bidirectional associations between sibling relationships and children's problem behaviors are robust, and links with prosocial behavior have also been reported. Using cross-lagged models, we were able to conservatively test temporal directions of links between positive and negative aspects of sibling relationships and children's prosocial behavior...

We compared the nature of the sibling relationship in dyads of varying genetic relatedness, employing a behavioural genetic design to estimate the contribution that genes and the environment have on this familial bond. Two samples were used-the Sisters and Brothers Study consisted of 173 families with two target non-twin children (mean ages = 7.42...

In the current report, we argue that the extent to which aspects of human development are heritable has little impact on the importance of policy that aims to ameliorate the adverse effects of environmental or intergenerational inequalities. We first address common misconceptions about heritability and behavioural genetics that can lead to inapprop...

SYNOPSIS Objective. The goal of the study was to identify determinants of child perceptions of parenting. Design. By using two children per family, the current study predicted siblings’ (106 pairs) perceptions of mothering and fathering at ages 9–13 from children’s perceptions of parenting and parent ratings of child difficulty, parental emotionali...

Child protection is everybody’s responsibility. All children should be able to grow up in circumstances where they are safe and supported, free from abuse and neglect, so they can achieve their full potential. Doctors play a crucial role in protecting children; early identification of risk can ensure provision of care and support, allowing children...

We investigated the association between marital quality and child behavior, assessing mother–child relationship quality as a potential mediator. The sample included 78 mothers with two target children (mean ages = 9.82 and 12.05 years, respectively). Mothers reported on their children’s behavior as well as their marital quality, while each child re...

The present study used a longitudinal, multi-informant approach to examine which specific elements of parents’ gendered attitudes and behaviours were predictive of multiple dimensions of children’s gender development. One hundred and six families with two children (older sibling M = 7.45 years and younger sibling M = 5.19 years at Time 1) were asse...

Genetically sensitive studies of parenting now have a 30-year history, offering sufficient data to draw conclusions about how genes and the environment influence parenting. The majority of this chapter focuses on summarizing this literature. The key aim was to look at potential differences in genetic and environmental influences as a function of in...

We set out to document how maternal and paternal negativity are related to children’s self-esteem during middle childhood in English and Indian families living in Britain. Although self-esteem is related to parental practices and parenting is a universal construct, the specifics of what may be associated with specific parenting practices varies acr...

Objective We examined how child temperament, parental sense of competence, and paternal involvement predicted observed mealtime dynamics. Method 97 families of children with feeding disorder (FD), sleep problems (SP), and typically developing (TD) children participated in the study. Data were collected during home visits, where mother–child and fat...

Objective: To prospectively examine the impact of parental mental health (PTSD, depression and anxiety), the couple’s relationship quality and the infant temperament on the parent–baby bond in first-time mothers and fathers. Background: Evidence suggests that poor parental mental health, difficult infant temperament and/or lower quality of the coup...

Research examining antecedents to sibling relationship quality have explored factors such as parenting and temperament (Brody, 1998); however, there has been no previous research on the topic of the current study. The present study used a cross-informant approach to examine parent–child and marital relationships as potential mediators of links betw...

The aim of the current study was to examine whether parental mental health, parent–infant relationship, infant characteristics and couple's relationship factors were associated with the infant's development. Forty-two families took part at three time points. The first, at 3 months postpartum, involved a video recorded observation (CARE-index) of pa...

There is converging evidence that between 1% and 3% of women develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after childbirth. Various vulnerability and risk factors have been identified, including mode of birth and support during birth. However, little research has looked at the role of adult attachment style in how women respond to events during bir...

The aims of the current study were to examine the effect of fathers' and mothers' pre and postnatal mental health on mother-infant and father-infant interactions. Mental health was broadly defined to include anxiety, depression and PTSD. A community sample of 44 mothers and 40 fathers from 45 families completed questionnaire measures of mental heal...

The purpose of this study was to specify the relationship between positive and harsh parenting and maternal scaffolding behavior. A 2nd aim was to disentangle the effects of maternal education and parenting quality, and a 3rd aim was to test whether parenting quality mediated the association between maternal education and scaffolding practices. We...

Many topics of interest to developmental scientists are informed by behavioural genetic findings and their implications. First, behavioural genetic theory and methods will be briefly outlined. Next, findings will be illustrated by considering two disparate areas-general cognitive ability (IQ), and children's self-conceptions. These topics have yiel...

Theoretically framed by a self-determination perspective on value acquisition and taking into account research into sibling similarity and differences, the current study examined links between sibling relationship quality and adolescents' intrinsic values (benevolence and universalism) and extrinsic values (power, achievement, and materialism). Pos...

Using a sibling design, this study examined the association between adolescents' friendship experiences and their aspirations for self-acceptance, affiliation, and financial success. We hypothesized that adolescent siblings would differ in their aspirations and that unique experiences in friendships would be associated with these differences. Withi...

The vast majority of us have at least one brother or sister, yet sibling relationships have received scant attention in the UK. While many parents claim to have a second child as a 'companion' for their first child, the reality is that many brothers and sisters spend much of their time locked in conflict. At the extreme, it is in fact the case that...

Relationships within families are interdependent and related to distal environmental factors. Low socioeconomic status (SES) and high household chaos (distal factors) have been linked to less positive marital and parent-child relationships, but have not yet been examined with regard to young children's sibling relationships. The present study teste...

Including more than one child per family in research enables the identification of nonshared family effects (resulting in sibling differentiation) as well as shared family effects (resulting in sib-ling similarity). This paper describes a model used to disentangle shared from nonshared processes in links between parenting and children's behavior. T...

The current paper examined associations between parenting and both peer group characteristics and friendship quality within a genetically sensitive design. Participants were aged 12-19 years (approximately equal numbers of males and females), including 424 sibling pairs and 1185 twin pairs, of whom 328 were MZ, 311 were DZ same-sex, 463 were DZ opp...

The identification of specific nonshared environments responsible for the variance in behaviour problems is a key challenge. Nonshared environmental influences on teacher-reported behaviour problems were explored independently of genetics using the monozygotic (MZ) twin differences design. Six aspects of classroom environment were rated by a repres...

Objective. Guided by Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, we examined relations between child characteristics and contextual factors and mothering and fathering in ethnic minority and majority samples within Great Britain. Design. 125 families (59 English and 66 of Indian origin) with 8½-year-old children participated. Parental warmth and use of hars...

The study aimed to replicate previous links with children's adjustment as well as using children's reports of maternal differential treatment (MDT) to test whether difference scores or favouritism scores demonstrate stronger links with child outcome. Finally, it tested for a unique prediction of children's adjustment from distinct aspects and infor...

The current study examined whether parental and contextual risk factors contribute to mothers' and fathers' differential treatment (MDT/FDT) when accounting for sibling dyad characteristics. Also explored was whether family type (single mothers vs. 2 parents) moderated the links between the parental and contextual correlates and MDT. One hundred an...

The present study investigated the adjustment of Indian adolescents living in Britain as well as the links between parents' and adolescents' acculturation styles and the adolescents' problem behaviours. The sample consisted of 68 young adolescents (31 Indian and 37 English) between the ages of 10 and 13, and their mothers and fathers. Mothers, fath...

We tested the hypothesis that mother–child warmth and responsiveness would moderate the link between young children's theory of mind skills and self-worth. Participants included 125 same-sex pairs of 3.5 year-old twins and their mothers. A battery of tests was individually administered to measure the children's theory of mind skills and verbal inte...

The study aimed to confirm previous findings showing links between household chaos and parenting in addition to examining whether household chaos was predictive of children's behaviour over and above parenting. In addition, we investigated whether household chaos acts as a moderator between parenting and children's behaviour. The sample consisted o...

Using a longitudinal, large-scale sample of British twins, we addressed the prediction of both cognitive abilities and behavioral adjustment from eight domains of environmental risk: minority status, socio-economic status, maternal medical factors, twin medical factors, maternal depression, chaos within the home environment, and parental feelings t...

The overarching goal of the study was to identify links between sibling relationship quality in early/middle childhood with children's adjustment, having accounted for the effects of parent-child relationship quality. The sample consisted of 101 working and middle-class 2-parent English families with 2 children ages 4-8 years. Parents provided repo...

The purpose of this paper was to examine explanatory mechanisms of differences in children's internalizing problems between ethnic minority (i.e., Indian) and ethnic majority (i.e., English) children living in Britain. Fifty-nine English children (31 girls) and 66 Indian children (30 girls), and their parents constituted the sample of this study. B...

We observed Mother— and Father—Child dyadic mutuality (responsiveness, interaction reciprocity, and cooperation), and its association with child behavior problems, in a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of 125 male (51%) and female 7-to-9-year-old children. Dyadic mutuality and positivity were coded from in-home videotaped structured...

The current study examined whether socioeconomic status (SES) and chaos in the home mediate the shared environmental variance associated with cognitive functioning simultaneously estimating genetic influences in a twin design. Verbal and nonverbal cognitive development were assessed at 3 and 4 years for identical and same-sex fraternal twin pairs p...

The psychological adjustment of ethnic minority children has received little research attention, particularly in Britain. The present study set out to investigate the adjustment of Indian children living in Britain as well as the adjustment of their English peers. The sample consisted of 125 children (66 Indian and 59 English) between the ages of 7...

Extensive research has identified risk factors for problem behaviour in childhood. However, most of this research has focused on isolated variables, ignoring possible additive influences. The purpose of this study was to examine whether risk factors for problem behaviour act in a cumulative manner, and to investigate whether cumulative risk stemmin...

Friendship and sibling relationships differ in that there is an element of choice in friendships, whilst the latter represent a fixed and given relationship. The present study set out to investigate the temperamental correlates of friendships and sibling relationships, as well as to examine their genetic and environmental components. Two hundred an...

The monozygotic (MZ) twin differences method was used to investigate nonshared environmental (NSE) influences independent of genetics. Four-year-old MZ twin pairs (N = 2,353) were assessed by their parents on 2 parenting measures (harsh parental discipline and negative parental feelings) and 4 behavioral measures (anxiety, prosocial behavior, hyper...

This review focuses on the Social Relations Model (SRM) and a genetic extension of this model as one approach for identifying the processes by which genetic factors influence familial exchanges (Kenny & La Voie, 1984). The basic SRM and its ability to decompose dyadic measures of family interaction into actor, partner and dyadic relationship effect...

The purpose of the present study was to validate a parent-based assessment of cognitive abilities of three-year-old children against a standard tester-administered measure. The cognitive abilities of 85 children (50 boys and 35 girls, members of 43 twin pairs) were assessed using a measure of non-verbal abilities called the Parent Report of Childre...

Harris argues that peer relationships are the chief determinants of personality development. Harris's thesis makes the behavioral genetic investigation of peer groups particularly timely. The present study examined genetic and environmental contribution to self-reported peer-group characteristics in two samples of adolescent siblings: 180 adoptive...

Environmental factors work to make siblings in the same family different from one another rather than similar. The Sibling Inventory of Differential Experience (SIDE; Daniels & Plomin, 1985) was constructed to evaluate how differently siblings perceive their experiences to be across three domains: parental treatment, sibling treatment, and peer cha...

Differences in mothers’ parenting behaviors toward their identical twin preschoolers were examined to identify nonshared environmental processes in social-emotional development. The study included 62 pairs of 3½-year-old same-sex identical twins. Indicators of each child’s social-emotional development (temperament, prosocial behavior, behavior prob...

Research has consistently demonstrated that children's behavior toward their siblings tends to resemble interactions occurring in the parent-child relationship. This study examined the relative contributions of genetic and environmental influences to the covariation between sibling relationships and mother-adolescent relationships. Reported and obs...

This article addresses concerns raised by M. C. Neale (1999) in his commentary on the D. A. Bussell et al. (1999) Nonshared Environment in Adolescent Development (NEAD) study. These concerns fall into two categories: (a) model assumptions and sample design and (b) testing of alternative models. The validity of the assumptions of quantitative geneti...

Explaining how genetic factors contribute to associations between parenting and adolescent adjustment is an important next step in developmental research. This study examined the mediating effect of adolescent perceptions on these associations and the genetic and environmental influences underpinning the mediated relationship. Parent, adolescent, a...

This paper examines how genetic, shared environment, and nonshared environment influence individual differences in close relationships. First, a brief explanation of behavioural genetic methods is given. Next, we review behavioural genetic studies of the close relationships in which people are typically involved (parent-child, sibling, friend, and...

Behavioural genetic research has shown that environmental influences relevant to the development of individual differences are largely nonshared in origin. That is, environmental influences do not make children in the same family similar to one another, however, little is known about which specific aspects of the environment are responsible. Identi...

Measures of family environment often show substantial differences between children in the same family and are thus nonshared environment candidates. A key question is whether differential environments are related to differential outcomes when genetic differences between children in the same family are controlled. Parent and child reports and observ...

To briefly summarize behavioral genetic findings in relation to child and adolescent psychopathology, paying special attention to the environmental rather than genetic components of variation, and to describe recent research exploring specific nonshared environmental processes in the development of adolescent depression. Behavioral genetic studies...