Socialization of Children’s Recall and Use of Strategies for Coping with Interparental Conflict

Using experimental, observational and interview-assessment methods, we examined relations among mother–child discussion skills and suggested strategies for coping with postdivorce interparental conflict in a conflict task, children’s memory for those strategies in a later recall interview, and children’s self-reported use of coping strategies in response to parental conflict at home. Participants included 50, 9–12 year-old children (50% female, 11% Mexican-American, 81% Euro-American, 8% other) and their mothers. Results indicated that the frequency of suggested coping strategies in the conflict task significantly predicted children’s later recall of the same strategies, and recalled strategies significantly predicted children’s self-reported use of the same strategies at home. Mothers’ and children’s discussion skills were less robust predictors of coping, except for secondary control and disengagement coping at-home. Gender and age differences, though few, were consistent with existing literature.     

Children’s Coping Strategies to Inter-Parental Conflict: The Moderating Role of Attachment

In the literature on inter-parental conflict, little attention has been paid to the relationships among children’s attachment, coping strategies, and coping efficacy. The present study aims to explore whether and how children’s Internal Working Models of attachment moderate the associations among children’s perceived distress during the conflict, coping strategies, and coping efficacy. One hundred eighty-two school-aged children (87 secure, 46 anxious-ambivalent and 49 avoidant) and their parents completed measures of inter-parental conflict, attachment, coping strategies, and coping efficacy. The results indicate that children with different IWMs varied in the relations between coping strategies and coping efficacy. More precisely, the data show that secure children, when distressed, use the all of the coping strategies investigated, but the only ones that mediate the associations between their distress reactions and perceived coping efficacy were the positive cognitive restructuring strategies and the seeking support for feelings strategies. Avoidant children, when distressed, use higher levels of distraction and avoidance strategies and avoidance strategies mediated the effects of the children’s distress reactions on their coping inefficacy. Finally, anxious-ambivalent children, when distressed, activate all the coping strategies, with the exception of distraction and support for feelings. However, none of the strategies are correlated to their perceived coping efficacy.     

Gender-Typing of Children’s Toys: Causes,Consequences, and Correlates

Gender differences in children’s toy interests and play behaviors are large and may lead to gender differentiation of physical, cognitive, and social development among children. In this Special Issue, we gather together cutting-edge research on the factors that affect gender differences in children’s toy interests, how subtle gender-related messages affect children’s performance and behaviors, and how adults create these gender-related messages and affect children’s interests. We illustrate themes found in the current literature, but also comment on issues that need to be addressed by future research. We also identify points of intervention in which stereotypes about toys and gender differentiated play behaviors and toy interests can be reduced in an effort to promote greater diversity of children’s play.     

An Exploration of Black Women’s Gendered Racial Identity Using a Multidimensional and Intersectional Approach

The Body Esteem Scale (BES; Franzoi and Shields 1984) has been a primary research tool for over 30 years, yet its factor structure has not been fully assessed since its creation, so a two-study design examined whether the BES needed revision. In Study 1, a series of principal components analyses (PCAs) was conducted using the BES responses of 798 undergraduate students, with results indicating that changes were necessary to improve the scale’s accuracy. In Study 2, 1237 undergraduate students evaluated each BES item, along with a select set of new body items, while also rating each item’s importance to their own body esteem. Body items meeting minimum importance criteria were then utilized in a series of PCAs to develop a revised scale that has strong internal consistency and good convergent and discriminant validity. As with the original BES, the revised BES (BES-R) conceives of body esteem as both gender-specific and multidimensional. Given that the accurate assessment of body esteem is essential in better understanding the link between this construct and mental health, the BES-R can now be used in research to illuminate this link, as well as in prevention and treatment programs for body-image issues. Further implications are discussed.     

Children’s Evaluation and Categorization of Transgender Children

Despite extant evidence of negative peer treatment of transgender adolescents and adults, little is known about how young children perceive transgender peers, particularly those who have socially transitioned or are living in line with their gender rather than sex at birth. Whereas children have been shown to be averse to gender nonconformity in peers, because many transgender children appear and behave in ways consistent with their expressed gender (but not their sex at birth), it is unclear how children evaluate these identities. In 2 studies, we investigated 5- to 10-year-old children’s (N_total = 113) preferences for transgender versus gender-“typical” peers who either shared their gender identity or did not. We also examined whether children categorized transgender peers by their sex or expressed gender, as it might inform their evaluations. Children preferred cisgender peers over transgender peers; however, they also liked peers of their own gender rather than the other gender (e.g., female participants preferred girls over boys), demonstrating that the oft-documented own-gender bias plays an important role even when children are reasoning about transgender peers. Children did not reliably categorize transgender peers by sex or gender; yet those who categorized transgender peers by their sex showed greater dislike of transgender peers. The current studies are the first to investigate cisgender children’s attitudes toward transgender children and suggest that perceptions of gender categorization and conformity play a role in children’s evaluations of transgender peers.     

School-Aged Children’s Attachment Dismissal Prospectively Predicts Divergence of Their Behavioral and Self-Reported Anxiety

Recent studies on attachment in middle childhood suggest that dismissing children tend to underreport their psychological distress relative to physiological indices of distress. However, this has yet to be examined in the context of behavioral indicators of distress. In this longitudinal study, a community sample of children (N?=?34, M _age?=?9.59 years) completed the Child Attachment Interview at Time 1. Three years later, they returned and completed the Trier Social Stress Task for Children (TSST-C), providing ratings of their state anxiety before and after the stressor. Four raters coded children’s behavioral signs of anxiety (e.g., non-signaling gestures, eye movement, posture, facial expression) on a 7-point scale during the storytelling and arithmetic tasks in the TSST-C. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that greater attachment dismissal was associated with greater behavioral anxiety in both the story and math tasks, but was not associated with greater increases in self-reported anxiety. Dismissal prospectively predicted increased divergence of behavioral and self-reported anxiety, such that higher dismissal was associated with higher divergence scores (i.e., underreporting of anxiety relative to behavioral indicators). We discuss these results in terms of their contribution to understanding attachment and emotion in an understudied developmental phase.     

Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) and Elementary School Aged Children’s Aggression: Results from a Cluster Randomized Trial

This study reports on aggressive outcomes from a cluster randomized trial of the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum. Fourteen elementary schools were randomly assigned to intervention or control condition and third grade students were followed through the fifth grade. Teacher and self-reports of student aggression, conduct problems, delinquency, acting out problems, and social information processing (SIP) variables were collected. Linear change for each of the SIP variables was noted with control students demonstrating increased normative beliefs about aggression, increased aggressive social problem solving, increased hostile attribution bias, and increased aggressive interpersonal negotiation strategies over time while PATHS students remained relatively stable. Teachers reported significant curvilinear change in student aggression, conduct problems, and acting out behavior problems; all favoring PATHS students.     

Children’s and Adolescents’ Conceptions of Happiness

Previous research on children’s and adolescents’ happiness has mainly focused on the different variables that may contribute to it. However, very few studies have investigated the beliefs that children and adolescents hold about happiness. It is important to study developmental and gender differences in the conceptions of happiness as beliefs affect people’s emotions and behaviors, and they may help explain how children and adolescents strive for their own (and potentially others’) happiness. To that aim, we conducted two different studies. In Study 1a 20 people (lay judges) completed two categorization tasks to obtain categorization systems that may include all the relevant content categories identified in previous literature with adults, adolescents and children. In Study 1b, we asked 162 children and adolescents to define—in their own words—what happiness meant for them. Their responses were coded according to two different systems derived from previous finding with adults and children and to an alternative coding system derived from the qualitative analyses of children’s and adolescents’ responses. Overall, results showed that hedonic conceptualization of happiness were mainly present in late childhood; whereas eudaimonic conceptualizations were mainly present in adolescence. No significant gender differences were found.     

How Religious Coping is Used Relative to Other Coping Strategies Depends on the Individual’s Level of Religiosity and Spirituality

Results from empirical studies on the role of religiosity and spirituality in dealing with stress are frequently at odds, and the present study investigated whether level of religiosity and spirituality is related to the way in which religious coping is used relative to other coping strategies. A sample of 616 university undergraduate students completed the Brief COPE (Carver in Int J Behav Med 4:92?C100, 1997) questionnaire and was classified into groups of participants with lower and higher levels of religiosity and spirituality, as measured by the WHOQOL-SRPB (WHOQOL-SRPB Group in Soc Sci Med 62:1486?C1497, 2006) instrument. For participants with lower levels, religious coping tended to be associated with maladaptive or avoidant coping strategies, compared to participants with higher levels, where religious coping was more closely related to problem-focused coping, which was also supported by multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. The results of the present study thus illustrate that investigating the role of religious coping requires more complex approaches than attempting to assign it to one higher order factor, such as problem- or emotion-focused coping, and that the variability of findings reported by previous studies on the function of religious coping may partly be due to variability in religiosity and spirituality across samples.     

A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Coaches’ Observed Emotion-Behavior Profiles and Adolescent Athletes’ Self-Reported Developmental Outcomes

This investigation explored the relationship between coaches’ emotions and adolescent athletes’ psychosocial development. Participants were 9 male soccer coaches and their female athletes (N = 134, M_age = 14.54). Systematic observation was used to assess coaches’ emotions during practice and athletes completed questionnaires evaluating developmental outcomes. Cluster analyses revealed 2 groups: “calm, inquisitive coaches” (n = 6) and “intense, hustle coaches” (n = 3). Athletes of calm, inquisitive coaches reported significantly more prosocial behaviors and less antisocial behaviors directed toward opponents than athletes of intense, hustle coaches. Thus, coaches’ emotions during practice may be associated with young athletes’ moral behaviors.     

Parents’ and Children’s ADHD in a Family System

ADHD symptoms “run in families”. However, relatively little is known about the ways in which parents’ symptoms might additively and interactively work with the parenting environment, to influence (and be influenced by) the developmental trajectory of symptoms in children and adolescents. In this commentary on the special section addressing this gap in knowledge, emphasis is placed on the importance of replicating and extending family-wide studies of ADHD symptoms and etiology. The current papers exemplify the leading-edge of such efforts, demonstrating the feasibility and rigor with which studies are being conducted, utilizing longitudinal and experimental designs. Families and parenting environments operate as a system in which individuals influence each other’s symptoms and functioning. In so doing, parents produce tremendous variability within (as well as between) each family in individuals’ ADHD symptoms from childhood through adulthood, via gene-environment transactions that may even begin during prenatal development.     

Children’s Responses to Hypothetical Provocation by Peers: Coordination of Assertive and Aggressive Strategies

Children often respond to aggression by peers with assertive bids or aggressive retaliation. Little is known, however, about whether and how children coordinate these strategies across different types of provocation. The present study examined endorsement of aggressive and assertive responses to hypothetical physical, relational, and verbal provocation in a sample of lower-income children (N?=?402, M age?=?10.21, SD?=?1.46). Latent-profile analysis revealed 3-class models for both aggression and assertion, each reflecting low, moderate, and high levels of endorsement. There was no association between children’s reported use of aggression and assertion. For example, children who endorsed high levels of aggression were equally likely to be classified as low, moderate, or high on assertive responding. For both assertion and aggression, parental ratings of children’s externalizing behavior and social skills differed across the low and high groups. No such differences were found between the low and moderate groups, despite the latter groups endorsing markedly higher levels of assertive and aggressive responses. This pattern of findings may be due, in part, to the situation specificity of children’s responding. Our findings hint at the complexity of children’s behavioral repertoires and contribute to a growing literature that suggests the need for intervention models that consider both social skills and social situations.     

Benjamin’s Children’s Theater and the Problem of Pure Means

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Caregiver Socialization of Reappraisal and Children’s Cognitive Flexibility Jointly Predict Latinx Children’s Anxiety

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Anxiety disorders are among the most common forms of psychopathology in childhood and represent a particularly concerning issue for Latinx children. Research...     

Multiracial Children’s and Adults’ Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals

Research has explored how multiracial individuals are categorized by monoracial individuals, but it has not yet explored how they are categorized by multiracial individuals themselves. We examined how multiracial children (aged 4–9 years old) and adults categorized multiracial targets (presented with and without parentage information). When parentage information was provided, multiracial targets were more likely to be categorized as neither wholly Black nor wholly White. However, both multiracial adults and children more often categorized multiracial targets as Black than as White regardless of the absence or presence of parentage information. For multiracial children, increased contact with White people predicted the tendency to categorize multiracial targets as Black. These data suggest that multiracial children’s categorizations are more flexible than those of monoracial children in previous research and that the tendency to categorize multiracial targets as Black emerges early in development within multiracial samples and is especially likely in predominantly White contexts.     

Children’s models of division

Young children find it much easier to solve concrete partitive division problems when the objects to be shared are grouped by the divisor rather than by the quotient, but the reverse is true in quotitive division problems [J. Exp. Child Psychol. 81 (2002a) 1; Dev. Sci. 5 (2002b) 452]. In previous research, the objects to be shared were grouped and the perceptual display was slightly different in the Grouping-by-Divisor and Grouping-by-Quotient conditions and this may have contributed to the difference between the conditions. In the study reported here, partitive and quotitive division problems were presented to 5–8-year-olds. The objects to be shared were presented in a grid and the “groups” were created by verbal instruction; the perceptual arrangement was identical in both conditions. The Grouping-by-Divisor condition remained significantly easier than the Grouping-by-Quotient condition in the partitive problems but the reverse was true in the quotitive problems. This shows that the perceptual arrangement of objects cannot fully explain the difference in difficulty between the Grouping-by-Divisor and Grouping-by-Quotient conditions and also provides support for the notion that young children rely on models that are based on restricted concrete representations when solving division problems. The results are discussed in terms of theories about the development of executive function, children’s attentional focus and the development of an integrated understanding of division.     

Antecedent Strategies to Promote Children’s and Adolescents’ Compliance with Adult Requests: A Review of the Literature

Compliance with adult requests and directives has often been described as a keystone behavior in children, meaning it is associated with engagement in other desirable and socially appropriate behaviors. As such, a great deal of research has been directed toward identifying strategies that increase compliance in children. Antecedent strategies, which focus on increasing the probability of compliance prior to or during the delivery of the directive or request, are popular because they have the potential to prevent noncompliance; however, it is not clear which of the numerous antecedent strategies are effective or for whom. Therefore, a systematic review of the antecedent strategies for compliance was completed. Forty-two studies were identified evaluating eight different antecedent strategies for children aged 1–19. It was determined that high-probability command sequences, effective instruction delivery, and errorless compliance training may all be considered evidence-based antecedent strategies to increase children’s compliance with adult requests.     

Profiles of Children’s Thinking About Violence in Families Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence remains a pervasive and common social problem. Evidence indicates that children witness many instances of intimate partner violence. However, the structure of children’s thinking about family violence is still not well understood. This research employed latent profile analysis to identify underlying latent profiles of children’s thinking about violence using the Attitudes and Beliefs About Violence Scale. The analysis identified two latent profiles mostly differentiated by children’s beliefs about whether or not victims of violence deserve to have violence inflicted upon them. Several covariates differentiated members of the two profiles. Suggestions for intervention and practice are included.     

Children’s Perspectives and Evaluations of Safety in Diverse Settings and Their Subjective Well-Being: A Multi-National Approach

There is a need to explore variations in children’s safety perceptions for different settings (home, school and neighbourhood) and their relationship with subjective well-being (this including satisfaction with safety and satisfaction with life as whole) by comparing a variety of cultural contexts. A further objective is to explore to what extent gender, age group (10 and 12-year-olds) and level of SWB (measured using the SLSS -Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale- and the BMSLSS -Brief Multidimensional Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale) play a role in this prediction. Results obtained through binary logistic models with samples from Spain (n = 2,724), Algeria (n = 2432), South Africa (n = 2192) and Israel (n = 1914), show that children’s perceptions of safety are predicted by their different perceptions and evaluations of school, home and the nearby area. Perceptions of safety in the nearby area and satisfaction with safety (O.R. = 1.080) contribute to predicting higher levels of satisfaction with life as a whole to a greater extent than scores on the SLSS (O.R. = 1.036) and the BMSLSS (O.R. = 1.050) scales. The country participants live in (especially when combined with satisfaction with safety) and, to a lesser extent gender, also make important contributions. The age group they belong to plays a significant role in predicting higher perceptions of safety at home, in the area nearby, at school, and in predicting higher satisfaction with safety. Results open the door to the introduction of specific interventions (e.g. improving parent-child communication, enhancing public spaces for children to play and promoting children’s participation at school), aimed at promoting higher satisfaction with safety and also indirectly at higher satisfaction with life as a whole, on the basis of achieving positive changes of those factors which make the highest contribution.

     

Independent Female Escort’s Strategies for Coping with Sex Work Related Stigma

Despite the reframing of ??prostitution?? as ??sex work?? in research and advocacy literature, the stigma associated with this activity persists. This study examines how independent female sex workers advertising online as ??escorts?? perceive and manage the stigma associated with their work, and how these coping strategies impact their personal relationships. Thirty escorts participated in semi-structured qualitative interviews; Goffman??s (1963) theory of stigma and information management strategies was used as a theoretical framework to guide the analysis of women??s experiences. Women who engaged in selective disclosure regarding sex work reported greater access to social support, while women who concealed their work from most people often reported feeling lonely and socially isolated. Escorts?? stigma coping strategies may have significant impact on their social relationships and access to social support.