Proactive vs. Retroactive Mediation: Effects of Mediation's Timing on Children's Reactions to Popular Cartoon Violence

An experiment with 150 children aged 5–7 and 10–12 revealed that children's reactions to violent TV shows differed based on when they received negatively valenced, evaluative mediation. Results also showed that the effect of mediation's timing consistently depended on children's age. Older children responded better to pre‐exposure mediation than they did to postexposure mediation. In some cases, older children exhibited reactance to postexposure mediation. For younger children, on the other hand, mediation given at any time was more beneficial than no mediation at all. Therefore, the timing of active mediation may be an important factor in interpreting research and in the design and implementation of mediation interventions.     

The Effect of Communication Change on Long‐term Reductions in Child Exposure to Conflict: Impact of the Promoting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) Program

African American couples (n = 331) with children, 89% of whom were married, were assigned to either (a) a culturally sensitive couple‐ and parenting‐enhancement program (ProSAAF) or (b) an information‐only control condition in which couples received self‐help materials. Husbands averaged 41 years of age and wives averaged 39 years. We found significant effects of program participation in the short term on couple communication, which was targeted by the intervention, as well as over the long term, on self‐reported arguing in front of children. Long‐term parenting outcomes were fully mediated by changes in communication for wives, but not for husbands. For husbands, positive change depended on amount of wife reported change. We conclude that wives' changes in communication from baseline to posttest may be more pivotal for the couples' long‐term experience of decreased arguing in front of children than are husbands' changes, with wives' changes leading to changes in both partners' reports of arguments in front of children.     

The impact of parenting styles on children developmental outcome: The role of academic self‐concept as a mediator

Although the importance of parenting styles directly influencing child development is well established, fewer studied have examined whether parenting styles also affect children's behavioural problems indirectly, mediated through children's academic self‐concept (ASC). We examined direct and shared effects of parenting styles on behavioural problems of 199 Kurdish primary school children with a mean age of 11 years 7 months (range 11 years 5 months to 12 years 3 months). Questionnaires measured parenting styles (child version of Alabama Parenting Questionnaire), assessed children's ASC (Myself‐As‐Learner Scale) and identified children's behavioural problems with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). PROCESS analysis was used to perform the mediation analysis. The results revealed that positive and negative parenting composites are indirectly related to children's internalising behaviour problems. In addition, ASC partially mediated the relationship between the negative parenting composite and prosocial behaviour. However, the mediation analysis did not show the expected indirect effect of parenting styles on externalising problems as being mediated via ASC. Hence, we argue that the ASC serves as a significant mediator in the relationship between parenting styles with prosocial behaviour and internalising problems.     

What predicts fathers' involvement with their children? A prospective study of intact families

This study used longitudinal data from the National Child Development Study to explore factors associated with aspects of fathers' involvement with their children at age 7, 11 and 16 years in intact families. Father involvement was predicted by different factors at different ages but generally it was continuous and multidimensional, and strongly associated with mother involvement. Low parental socio‐economic status and child behaviour problems were negatively related to father involvement at age 7. With older children, father involvement was inversely related to family size and poor school performance. Financial difficulties in the family were not related to father involvement at either age. Domestic tension was negatively related to certain aspects of fathers' involvement with younger children. Father's education was generally related to father's involvement but maternal employment was only related to low father‐interest in child's education at age 7 and 11 years.     

The effectiveness of parental communication in modifying the relation between food advertising and children's consumption behaviour

The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of various types of parental communication in modifying children's responses to television food advertising. In a combined diary‐survey study among 234 parents of 4‐ to 12‐year‐old children, I investigated how different styles of advertising mediation (active vs. restrictive) and consumer communication (concept‐oriented vs. socio‐oriented) moderated the relation between children's advertising exposure and their consumption of advertised energy‐dense food products. Interaction analysis in regression showed that active advertising mediation (i.e. explaining the purpose and nature of advertising), and socio‐oriented consumer communication (i.e. emphasizing control and restrictions) significantly reduced the impact of advertising on children's food consumption. Parental restrictions of advertising exposure were only effective among younger children (<8). These results suggest that critical discussion about advertising and rule making about consumption are most effective in countering the impact of food advertising.     

Children's and adults' recall of children's news stories in both print and audio‐visual presentation modalities

Research into adults' recall from different presentation modalities has demonstrated a recall advantage for print over television yet recent research indicates that children remember television news better than print news. An experiment was conducted by comparing children's and adults' recall of children's news stories presented in two different modalities, television and print, in order to establish whether children's recall advantage for television is dependent on their age or level of reading proficiency. A sample of 40 adults, 40 13‐year‐olds and 40 11‐year‐olds were presented with children's news stories, either in their original televised form or in a print version. All participants were aware they would be tested for recall. The results of the cued recall test indicated that children from both age groups learned more from the television news than from the print versions, regardless of age or reading proficiency and that adults remembered equal amounts from both presentation modalities. For the 11‐year‐olds the advantage of television was only found for information that had been accompanied by redundant pictures in the televised version, providing support for the dual‐coding hypothesis. For 13‐year‐olds the recall of television was not dependent on the addition of redundant visual information. Viewers and readers were found to invest the same amounts of mental effort, but reported levels of invested mental effort were found to be dependent on age and level of reading proficiency. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mother–child joint writing in low SES: Sociocultural factors,maternal mediation,and emergent literacy

Emergent literacy was studied as related to sociocultural factors, particularly to maternal mediation of writing. Forty-one low socioeconomic status (SES) children, 5;5–6;0 years old, and their mothers participated. The child's emergent literacy was assessed by word writing and recognition, phonological awareness, and orthographic awareness. To assess mediation of writing, children were asked to write words and names, and their mothers were asked to help them. Maternal mediation was analyzed in terms of the steps in the encoding process that the mother intervened in, her reference to Hebrew orthography, and her mediation in printing letters. Child's literacy was found to be related to SES, maternal literacy, literacy tools at home, and maternal mediation. Hierarchical regressions indicated that child's literacy tools contributed to all emergent literacy skills, beyond SES and maternal literacy. The quality of mediation predicted word writing and recognition and phonological awareness after controlling for all sociocultural factors. A qualitative analysis illustrated the range of maternal mediation within or below the child's ZPD.     

The ontogeny of intent‐based normative judgments

When evaluating norm transgressions, children begin to show some sensitivity to the agent's intentionality around preschool age. However, the specific developmental trajectories of different forms of such intent‐based judgments and their cognitive underpinnings are still largely unclear. The current studies, therefore, systematically investigated the development of intent‐based normative judgments as a function of two crucial factors: (a) the type of the agent's mental state underlying a normative transgression, and (b) the type of norm transgressed (moral versus conventional). In Study 1, 5‐ and 7‐year‐old children as well as adults were presented with vignettes in which an agent transgressed either a moral or a conventional norm. Crucially, she did so either intentionally, accidentally (not intentionally at all) or unknowingly (intentionally, yet based on a false belief regarding the outcome). The results revealed two asymmetries in children's intent‐based judgments. First, all age groups showed greater sensitivity to mental state information for moral compared to conventional transgressions. Second, children's (but not adults') normative judgments were more sensitive to the agent's intention than to her belief. Two subsequent studies investigated this asymmetry in children more closely and found evidence that it is based on performance factors: children are able in principle to take into account an agent's false belief in much the same way as her intentions, yet do not make belief‐based judgments in many existing tasks (like that of Study 1) due to their inferential complexity. Taken together, these findings contribute to a more systematic understanding of the development of intent‐based normative judgment.     

From empathy to action: Can enhancing host‐society children's empathy promote positive attitudes and prosocial behaviour toward refugees?

Over half of refugees are school‐aged children. In host communities, children's attitudes and behaviours are important for the integration of refugee children. This study examines the empathy–attitudes–action model in middle childhood (N = 94, 8 to 11 years old). In both the experimental and control conditions, children were introduced to a (fictional) refugee and told that he or she would be moving to their school. The experimental condition also listened to a storybook about the child's refugee experience. Empathy, outgroup attitudes, and prosocial behaviour toward the incoming child, and refugees as a group, were measured. Although mediation was not supported, the storybook condition reported more empathy and helping intentions, and attitudes predicted helping intentions but not giving to refugees. Results highlight how host‐society children can welcome refugees.     

Children prefer to learn from mind‐readers

Kim and Harris ( 2014 , J. Cogn. Dev.) showed that children selectively learned from an informant who produced apparently magical outcomes as compared to another informant who produced only ordinary outcomes in the domain of everyday physics. In the present study, we tested children's ability to differentiate between and selectively learn from informants who displayed either an extraordinary or an ordinary ability in the domain of everyday psychology. Prior studies have shown that children come to appreciate what is ordinarily involved in knowing the private mental states of other people. Drawing on this research, we asked whether 3‐ to 4‐ and 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children preferentially learned from an informant who knew another person's mind via either an ordinary or an extraordinary form of communication. As compared to younger children, older children were more likely to learn from the extraordinary informant. Moreover, children's ability to differentiate between the two informants was a better predictor of their learning from the extraordinary informant than age. We discuss the findings in the light of prior work on selective learning, children's ideas about prayer and their understanding of impossibility.     

Heterogeneity in Maltreated and Non‐maltreated Preschool Children's Inhibitory Control: The Interplay Between Parenting Quality and Child Temperament

This study examined the contribution of child temperament, parenting, and their interaction on inhibitory control development in a sample of maltreated and non‐maltreated preschool children. One hundred and eighteen mother–child dyads were drawn from predominantly low‐income, rural communities. Dyads participated in a laboratory session in which maternal warm autonomy support, warm guidance, and strict/hostile control were observationally coded during a joint teaching task. Independent assessments of children's inhibitory control were obtained, and observers rated children's temperament. After relevant covariates, including income, maternal education, and child age and IQ were controlled for, there were no differences between the maltreatment and non‐maltreatment groups in either children's inhibitory control or mothers' behaviours in the laboratory session. Even after much of the variance in children's inhibitory control was accounted for from the covariates, children's temperamental negativity moderated the effects of warm autonomy support on inhibitory control in both maltreatment and non‐maltreatment groups. Temperamentally negative children whose mothers displayed more warm autonomy support showed greater inhibitory control, at levels on par with low‐negative children. Findings suggest that heterogeneity in children's self‐regulation may be due in part to individual differences in sensitivity to caregiver support for children's independence, even among those exposed to maltreatment. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fulfilment of intention and desire in children's judgements of emotion for sociomoral events

This study investigated whether children appreciate that enacting an intention can emotionally affect an agent separately from whether the agent's desire is fulfilled. Children ages 5–11 years and adults heard several vignettes about an agent who intended to take another child's toy in which the agent's intention was either enacted or blocked and desire was fulfilled or unfulfilled. The effect of intention on judgements of the agent's emotion varied according to desire fulfilment and age. Overall, participants judged that an agent who acted intentionally to fulfil a desire felt happier than an agent whose intention was blocked. When the agent's desire was unfulfilled, the effect of enacting an intention varied by age. Five‐ to 6‐year‐olds judged that acting intentionally could decrease the negative emotion associated with an unfulfilled desire. The findings show relatively early appreciation of intentionality in children's judgements of emotion. Happy victimizer attributions decreased between 5 and 8 years, but attributions of positive emotion to transgressors did not vary by intentionality. The relationships between intentionality, agency, and emotion are discussed.     

Guess who? Children use prosody to infer intended listeners

This study examined the relative influence of prosody and semantic content in children's inferences about intended listeners. Children (n = 72), who ranged in age from 5 to 10 years, heard greetings with prosody and content that was either infant or adult directed and chose the intended listener from amongst an infant or an adult. While content affected all children's choices, the effect of prosody was stronger (at least, for children aged 7–10 years). For conditions in which prosodic cues were suggestive of one listener, and content cues, another, children aged 7–10 years chose the listener according to prosody. In contrast, the youngest age group (5‐ to 6‐year‐olds) chose listeners at chance levels in these incongruent conditions. While prosodic cues were most influential in determining children's choices, their ratings of how certain they felt about their choices indicated that content nonetheless influenced their thinking about the intended listener. Results are the first to show the unique influence of prosody in children's thinking about appropriate speech styles. Findings add to work showing children's ability to use prosody to make inferences about speakers' communicative intentions.     

Follow the liar: the effects of adult lies on children's honesty

Recent research shows that most adults admit they lie to children. We also know that children learn through modeling and imitation. To date there are no published studies that examine whether lying to children has an effect on children's honesty. We aimed to bridge the gap in this literature by examining the effects of adults' lies on elementary and preschool‐aged children's behavior using a modified temptation resistance paradigm, in which children are tempted to peek at a toy they have been told not to look at, and later given a chance to either admit peeking, or try to conceal their transgression by lying. Prior to being tested, half of the children were told a lie and half were not. We then measured both cheating (peeking) and lie‐telling behaviors. We hypothesized that lying to a child would increase the likelihood that they would both peek at the toy and lie about having done so. Results showed that school‐age children were more likely to peek if they had been lied to, and were also more likely to lie about peeking. In contrast with the school‐age children, there was no difference in peeking or lying for preschoolers who were and were not lied to. These results have important implications for parenting and educational settings.     

Are there limits to collectivism? Culture and children's reasoning about lying to conceal a group transgression

This study explored the effects of collectivism on lying to conceal a group transgression. Seven‐, 9‐, and 11‐year‐old US and Chinese children (N=374) were asked to evaluate stories in which protagonists either lied or told the truth about their group's transgression and were then asked about either the protagonist's motivations or justification for their own evaluations. Previous research suggests that children in collectivist societies such as China find lying for one's group to be more acceptable than do children from individualistic societies such as the United States. The current study provides evidence that this is not always the case: Chinese children in this study viewed lies told to conceal a group's transgressions less favourably than did US children. An examination of children's reasoning about protagonists' motivations for lying indicated that children in both countries focused on an impact to self when discussing motivations for protagonists to lie for their group. Overall, results suggest that children living in collectivist societies do not always focus on the needs of the group. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Young Children Selectively Expect Failure Disclosure to High‐achieving Peers

Children make many decisions about whether and how to disclose their performance to peers, teachers, parents and others. Previous research has found that children's disclosure declines with age and that older children and teenagers preferentially choose a peer audience for performance disclosure based on similar achievement. This research examines younger children's choice of a disclosure audience: whether young children predict that people will distinguish between peers at different achievement levels, and whether or not younger children expect preferential selections between those peers for their performance disclosure. One hundred and thirty‐nine children, aged 3 to 6 years, were asked about a character's disclosure of classroom performance information. At least until the age of 6 years, children predicted significantly greater disclosure of failure to a high achieving peer who had been successful. When asked to predict the disclosure of success, however, children in all age groups did not discriminate between disclosing to the high‐achieving or low‐achieving peer. This evidence suggests that very young children may not show the same valence‐matching preferences as older children and that early school ages are a critical time when children begin to adopt social norms around disclosure that impinge on possible help‐seeking. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive Behavioral Principles Within Group Mentoring: A Randomized Pilot Study

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a group mentoring program that included components of empirically supported mentoring and cognitive behavioral techniques for children served at a community mental health center. Eighty-six 8- to 12-year-old children were randomly assigned to either group mentoring or a wait-list control group. Group mentoring significantly increased children's reported social problem-solving skills and decreased parent-reported child externalizing and internalizing behavior problems after controlling for other concurrent mental health services. Attrition from the group mentoring program was notably low (7%) for children. The integration of a cognitive behavioral group mentoring program into children's existing community mental health services may result in additional reductions in externalizing and internalizing behavior problems.     

Daniel has fallen into a muddy puddle – Schadenfreude or sympathy?

The present study investigated the experience of schadenfreude among children. Participants were 4‐ to 8‐year‐old children (n = 100) who were told stories of another child experiencing a misfortune while pursuing a morally positive versus morally negative goal. Schadenfreude, sympathy, and helping behaviour towards the suffering child were assessed. Results showed that beginning at the age of 4, emotional and behavioural reactions towards a misfortune of another child were predicted by the moral valence of the other child's goal. Furthermore, morally negative goals decreased helping behaviour and morally positive goals increased helping behaviour. Multilevel mediation analysis revealed that the relation between goal valence and helping behaviour was mediated by both schadenfreude and sympathy. However, those effects were especially pronounced in older children.     

Children's memory of recurring events: is the first event always the best remembered?

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effect of age (4–5 and 6–8 years) and retention interval on children's ability to remember separate occurrences of a repeated event that varied in terms of content (items, dialog, etc.) Experiment 1 explored children's ability to recall the first versus last occurrence of a series of six events, at either one week or six weeks delay. Experiments 2 and 3 explored children's ability to identify the position of items in terms of their order of presentation within the series across two retention intervals. Overall, the results revealed clear age differences in children's performance. In general, the 6‐ to 8‐year‐old children performed better on all tasks than the 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children. Further, the older children showed relatively good memory of the first and last items compared to the middle items, although the last items were more likely to be forgotten or misplaced in the sequencing tasks over time than the first items. For the younger children, the patterns of results were sometimes but not always consistent with that of the older children. The relevance and generalisability of these findings to the legal setting are discussed as well as directions for future research. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Unbiased Mind: A Possible Resource for Medical Problems

The purpose of this pilot study was to explore the problem solving abilities of school‐aged children. The study took place at the summer day camp program at Howard Public School, in Etobicoke, Ontario. There were 15 children (6 boys, 9 girls) with a mean age at the time of testing of 5.1 years. A medical problem with a known solution (concept of a flow‐directed device to determine pulmonary wedge pressure) was presented to 15 children in the form of a children's story. The children were then asked to solve the problem by completing the story. A successful answer was taken to be any that suggested a flow‐directed device. The results showed that of the 15 children who read the story, four suggested flow‐directed methodologies. Other non‐practical, but creative, solutions were suggested. The findings suggest that by translating a previously solved medical problem into a simplistic children's story, preschoolers may provide a conceptual solution.