Efrat Sher-Censor

University of Haifa | haifa · Center for the Study of Child Development

This study examined the associations between mothers’ predisposition to show rejection sensitivity and children’s cognitions regarding peer rejection and their social self-perceptions. It also explored whether these associations were mediated by mothers’ behaviors in situations that might suggest their children were rejected by peers. Participants...

Emotional availability in parent-child interactions fosters children’s socioemotional development. Little is known about the emotional availability of parents and children with profound motor disabilities and complex communication needs or the contributions of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to emotional availability. To begin addr...

Background Conflictual interactions with patients’ relatives are prevalent in the work of hospital nurses. These situations may increase burnout and result in intentions to leave the nursing profession and high rates of turnover. It is important to understand the coping mechanisms and behaviours that nurses employ in such conflicts, to help them de...

Childhood maltreatment is associated with disruptions in narrative coherence about close relationships. The current pilot study introduced a brief new measure of narrative coherence about romantic partners, and tested whether post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms mediated the link between childhood maltreatment and narrative coherence abou...

This study examined the associations between nursing aides’ mentalization, expressed emotion, and observed sensitivity towards their residents with dementia. The study also explored whether nursing aides’ mentalization and expressed emotion are relational constructs that vary with residents’ characteristics and behavior. To assess mentalization and...

This scoping review focused on parents' resolution of their reactions to receiving a diagnosis for their child, based on Marvin and Pianta's model and Reaction to Diagnosis Interview (RDI). We aimed to map the populations examined, the prevalence of parents' narrated resolution, and what is known about its outcomes and determinants. A structured se...

Objectives This study examined the emotional availability of nursing aide-resident with dementia dyads in a long-term care-facility. Emotional availability refers to the nursing aide’s sensitivity toward the resident, structuring their interactions in a non-intrusive and non-hostile manner and the resident’s responsiveness to and involvement of the...

This study examined the associations of parents’ expressed emotion (EE) and parenting stress, with behavioral problems of children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, idiopathic autism (iASD) and typically developing (TD) children. Parents of children aged 3–8 years completed the five-minute-speech-sample (FMSS), parental stress index and children beha...

Preterm-born infants and their mothers are at higher risk of showing less attuned interactions. We sought to identify characteristics of preterm-born infants associated with the attunement of mother–infant interactions at the corrected ages of 3–4 months, looking specifically at motor behaviors. We focused on infants’ spontaneous movements, achieve...

Little is known regarding how parents’ responses when first learning about their adolescents’ deviant peer affiliation affect adolescents’ further affiliation and disclosure of risk behavior to parents. Studies on the effects of parents’ warnings to control adolescents’ material or personal information resources are particularly scarce. To address...

We examined the hypothesis that lower maternal relatedness mediates the associations of immigrant mothers’ acculturative stress and lack of benefit finding in immigration with poorer adjustment of their adolescents in terms of more externalizing problems and lower school achievements and self‐worth. Participants were 93 adolescents (47.31% girls, M...

We examined the effectiveness of a mental health course for developmental allied healthcare professionals (DAHPs) that focused on emotional and relational processes inherent to treatment. We hypothesized that (a) following the course, DAHPs would report increased awareness and sense of competence in dealing with these processes; (b) an increased se...

This study examined the associations between mothers’ attachment style and their information processing of hypothetical stressful situations involving their children. 219 mothers of preschool-aged and kindergarten-aged children completed an online survey. Mothers were given five vignettes describing hypothetical stressful situations involving their...

Research Findings This study focused on kindergartens serving low SES families and examined the associations between teachers’ perceptions of their teaching experiences in their classroom and observed global classroom quality. Forty teachers and their classrooms participated. Teachers’ perceptions of their teaching experiences in the classroom were...

Objectives Classroom climate, especially emotional support in the classroom, shapes children’s academic performance and socioemotional adjustment. This study focused on special education classrooms and examined two factors that may be associated with emotional support in the classroom, teachers’ attachment style and teachers’ perception of their te...

Parents’ resolution of their child’s diagnosis is associated with parental sensitivity and secure child attachment. The Reaction to Diagnosis Interview (RDI) is the accepted measure for assessing resolution, but its administration and coding are time and labor intensive. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Reaction to Diagnosis Q...

This study examined the interplay between national identity, autobiographical narratives on national identity and the adjustment of immigrant and majority groups in Israel. Participants were 193 Jewish Israelis (63.68% female; mean age 29.54 years); 51.29% immigrated from the Former Soviet Union and 48.71% were from native-born families. Participan...

Parents often guide the interactions of their young children with their peers. Identifying factors that may shape parents’ behaviors in such situations is thus important. The objective of this study was to investigate whether maternal rejection sensitivity (RS) would be related to mothers’ responses to challenges in their children’s peer interactio...

This study examined the array of associations among the emotional valence and the coherence of mothers' representations of their relationship with their toddlers, mothers' reported parenting stress, and toddlers' internalizing and externalizing behaviors. To evaluate maternal representations, 55 mothers were interviewed using the Five Minute Speech...

This study examined the interplay of mothers' coherent representations of their child (i.e., multidimensional and balanced view); resolution of the child's ASD diagnosis (i.e., acceptance); and emotional availability to the child in the unique cultural context of Arab-Israeli families. Participants were 46 mothers and their 2-8 year old sons. Coher...

This study examined whether the link between higher maternal sensitive guidance of emotional dialogues and fewer adolescent behavior problems is mediated by adolescents' more coherent representations of their mothers. The study also explored the consistency of this model across families from varied cultural backgrounds. Participants were 143 Jewish...

Culture and parenting shape the ability to recall early childhood experiences. This research focused on the unique context of upbringing in the Israeli kibbutz and examined how cultural orientation and experiences of parental engagement in Kibbutz and non-Kibbutz settings shaped adults' earliest memories. Participants were 108 women (study 1) and 7...

Consistent with models of environmental sensitivity (Pluess, 2015), research suggests that the effects of parents' behaviors on child adjustment are stronger among children who struggle to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors compared with children with better self-regulation. This study extended prior research by assessing maternal rep...

This study focused on Arab-Israeli mothers of children with ASD, and examined maternal resolution of the child's diagnosis, and its associations with mothers' sensitivity to the child, maternal psychological distress, parenting stress, social support, and family demographics. Forty-six mothers and their 2-8 year old sons participated in the study....

Emotional overinvolvement (EOI) in parents' Five Minute Speech Samples (FMSSs; Magaña-Amato, 1993) is thought to measure overconcern and enmeshment with one's child. Although related to maladaptive outcomes in studies of adult children, FMSS EOI evidences varied relations with behavior problems in studies with young children. These mixed findings m...

The assessment of the quality of infants’ spontaneous movements is a diagnostic tool for the young nervous system. We examined whether it relates to the quality of the interactions between infants born preterm and their mothers. Thirty-nine healthy infants born preterm (Mage in weeks = 14.59, SD = 2.21; 38.46% female) and their mothers participated...

The Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) originated in the adult psychiatry literature, and is mostly used for assessing caregivers' expressed emotion (EE) regarding a relative with mental illness. In recent years the FMSS has been increasingly employed in research with parents and young children. This review focuses on the FMSS procedure from a develo...

This study examined gender differences in autonomy and relatedness in adolescent-mother interactions, to evaluate two competing notions. The first, based on social role theory, suggested that girls and their mothers would show lower autonomy and higher relatedness than boys and their mothers. The second, stemming from the psychodynamic perspective,...

This study integrated two views on parents’ narratives regarding their child, the psychiatric model of expressed emotion (EE) and the attachment model of narrative coherence (NC), to examine common and unique associations of maternal EE and NC with preschoolers’ behavior problems across families from varied ethnicities. The five minute speech sampl...

Based on Self-Determination Theory, our study examined the associations of maternal perspective taking (PT), clear expectations (CE), and their interaction during mother–male adolescent conflict with sons’ externalizing and internalizing problems. Fifty-one mothers and their 16.5 year old sons were observed while conducting a revealed differences t...

Intergenerational congruence of mothers’ and preschoolers’ narratives about the mother–child relationship was examined in a sample of 198 Hispanic (59.1%), Black (19.2%), and White (21.7%) mothers and their preschool child. Mothers’ narratives were obtained with the Five Minute Speech Sample and were coded for negative and positive affective conten...

Our study examined discrepancies in Mexican American adolescent–parent perceptions regarding parental autonomy promoting and their associations with adolescents’ adjustment. A total of 138 Mexican American sixth graders reported their global self-worth and depressive symptoms. Adolescents and parents also reported their perceptions of parental auto...

The study examined how individuality and connectedness of female adolescents relate to their perceptions of maternal behavior and to adolescent-mother discrepancies in perceptions of maternal behavior. Seventy 16.5-year-old daughters and their mothers participated in the study. Individuality and connectedness of the daughters were assessed from obs...

Mexican-American adolescents are at an elevated risk for adjustment difficulties. In an effort to identify parenting practices that can affect the adjustment of Mexican-American youth, the current study examined parents' promotion of psychological autonomy and parents' psychological control as perceived by Mexican-American early adolescents, and ex...

The study examined the associations between female adolescents' individuation during mid-adolescence and their adjustment two years later to leaving home for mandatory military service. Forty nine daughter-mother dyads participated. Individuality and connectedness during adolescent-mother interactions were observed at age 16. Two years later girls...

Children attachment narratives and early attachment behaviors A central discovery from recent attachment research is that the individual differences most pertinent for assessing attachment representations are revealed in the coherence of the narratives, and that the content is less relevant. The goal of this paper is to illustrate this critical dis...

Discussions of oral narratives often distinguish between the organization and the content of narratives--what some refer to as the "how" versus the "what" of the narrative. This distinction refers to two levels of analysis: The first looks at the coherent link between the elements of the narrative--the "how," and the second looks at the narrative t...

This study examined the associations among mothers' insightfulness into their infants' internal experience, mothers' sensitivity to their infants' signals, and infants' security of attachment to their mothers. The insightfulness of 129 mothers of 12-month-old infants was assessed by showing mothers 3 videotaped segments of observations of their inf...

Discussions of oral narratives often distinguish between the organization and the content of narratives--what some refer to as the "how" versus the "what" of the narrative. This distinction refers to two levels of analysis: The first looks at the coherent link between the elements of the narrative--the "how," and the second looks at the narrative t...