Sex Stereotyping and Diagnosis of Psychopathology

No abstract available for this article.     

Early Childhood Discipline: A Review of the Literature

In this literature review concerning early childhood discipline we particularly highlight American children's discipline with respect to historical perspectives, generational theories, gender issues, parental styles, methods of discipline, and corporal punishment. We also address corporal punishment's history, the debate among experts, beliefs and practices among parents, the controversy in public schools, religious influences, and a conflation of the issues.     

Sex and the Right to HIV/AIDS Education in Early Childhood

This study explored how early childhood teachers (n=5) and young children (n=174) (age range 7 to 8 years; males = 81; females = 93) in two primary schools constructed and interpreted the right to HIV/AIDS education. Data were captured using individual interviews with teachers and group interviews with young children. Analysis of the data showed that teachers viewed young children's right to health information positively but did not consider the right to sexual information. Teachers operated within discourses which upheld the image of the child as innocent requiring protection from sexual knowledge. Children's perceptions of their rights to knowledge of sex in HIV/AIDS education showed ambiguity. Some accepted the right to know whilst others felt that knowledge about HIV/AIDS was inconsistent with childhood innocence.     

Personality Traits Elucidate Sex Differences in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Comorbidity During Early Childhood

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is highly comorbid with other childhood disorders, and there are striking sex differences in this comorbidity, particularly during early childhood. For example, boys with ADHD are more likely to exhibit comorbid disruptive behavior and neurodevelopmental disorders, compared to girls, during early childhood. Yet, explanations for these well-established sex differences remain in short supply. The current study evaluated the novel hypothesis that personality traits may serve as intermediate phenotypes that help explain sex differences in common ADHD comorbidity profiles during early childhood. Study participants were 109 children between the ages of 3 and 6 and their primary caregivers and teachers/daycare providers, recruited from the community and over-recruited for ADHD-related problems. Primary caregivers completed the Child Behavior Checklist, and teachers/daycare providers completed the Teacher Report Form as a measure of child behavior problems. Examiners completed the California Q-Sort as a measure of child personality traits. Moderated mediation analyses suggested that personality traits explain associations between ADHD and oppositional-defiance, aggression, and language problems in a sex-specific manner. While high neuroticism mediated associations between ADHD and oppositional-defiance in girls, disagreeableness mediated associations between ADHD and aggression and low conscientiousness mediated associations between ADHD and neurodevelopmental language problems in boys. Sex differences in trait-psychopathology associations may help explain sex differences in comorbidity profiles with possible implications for child assessment and personalized early intervention.     

Sex Role Stereotyping in the Sunday Comics: A Twenty Year Update

In 1994, six months of Sunday comic strips (N = 78) were collected and coded for gender stereotypical images. Each of the family-oriented cartoons was analyzed for frequency of male and female appearance, location of appearance, major activities, and the presence or absence of reading material and the traditional symbol of domestication—the apron [S. Brabant (1976) Sex Role Stereotyping in the Sunday Comics, Sex Roles, Vol. 2, p. 336]. Results were compared to earlier findings from comparable samples in 1974 and 1984. The present research indicates two trends: 1) a movement away from some stereotypical images over the twenty years studied, while, at the same time, 2) a return to 1974 levels of gender stereotyping for other images. Implications are discussed.     

Neighborhood Deprivation during Early Childhood and Conduct Problems in Middle Childhood: Mediation by Aggressive Response Generation

The tremendous negative impact of conduct problems to the individual and society has provided the impetus for identifying risk factors, particularly in early childhood. Exposure to neighborhood deprivation in early childhood is a robust predictor of conduct problems in middle childhood. Efforts to identify and test mediating mechanisms by which neighborhood deprivation confers increased risk for behavioral problems have predominantly focused on peer relationships and community-level social processes. Less attention has been dedicated to potential cognitive mediators of this relationship, such as aggressive response generation, which refers to the tendency to generate aggressive solutions to ambiguous social stimuli with negative outcomes. In this study, we examined aggressive response generation, a salient component of social information processing, as a mediating process linking neighborhood deprivation to later conduct problems at age 10.5. Participants (N = 731; 50.5 % male) were drawn from a multisite randomized prevention trial that includes an ethnically diverse and low-income sample of male and female children and their primary caregivers followed prospectively from toddlerhood to middle childhood. Results indicated that aggressive response generation partially mediated the relationship between neighborhood deprivation and parent- and teacher-report of conduct problems, but not youth-report. Results suggest that the detrimental effects of neighborhood deprivation on youth adjustment may occur by altering the manner in which children process social information.     

Bilingualism and Creativity in Early Childhood

This study examined the possible effect of bilingualism on creativity in nonmathematical and mathematical problem solving among bilingual and monolingual preschoolers. Two groups of children (M age = 71.9 months, SD = 3.6) from the same monolingual kindergartens participated in this study: 15 Russian/Hebrew balanced bilinguals and 16 native Hebrew-speaking monolinguals. All children were administered the Working Memory Test, the Verbal (Semantic) Fluency Test, the Pictorial Multiple Solution Task on general creativity, and the Creating Equal Number Task on mathematical creativity. The results showed that balanced bilingualism has a positive effect on the development of creativity in problem solving, but that the effect differs according to the domain: verbal, general, or mathematical creativity.     

Sex Role Stereotyping and the Evaluation of the Performance of Women: Changing Trends

Conditions under which people are prejudiced against women are examined. In two experiments, college students evaluated two professional articles in feminine fields and two in masculine. The author's sex and title were manipulated such that each article was authored in four ways-by a male (Mr.), a female (Miss), a high status male (Dr.) and a high status female (Dr.). It was concluded that prejudice against women may not be as pervasive as demonstrated in previous research but that women in certain "masculine" fields may receive biased evaluations of their work by men if they are thought to be of low professional status.     

Normative Social Role Concepts in Early Childhood

The current studies (N = 255, children ages 4–5 and adults) explore patterns of age‐related continuity and change in conceptual representations of social role categories (e.g., “scientist”). In Study 1, young children's judgments of category membership were shaped by both category labels and category‐normative traits, and the two were dissociable, indicating that even young children's conceptual representations for some social categories have a “dual character.” In Study 2, when labels and traits were contrasted, adults and children based their category‐based induction decisions on category‐normative traits rather than labels. Study 3 confirmed that children reason based on category‐normative traits because they view them as an obligatory part of category membership. In contrast, adults in this study viewed the category‐normative traits as informative on their own (not only as a cue to obligations). Implications for continuity and change in representations of social role categories will be discussed.     

儿童早期的自我调控发展

儿童的自我调控在生后就存在并逐渐发展起来,是神经心理的不断成熟以及与环境相互作用的结果,主要涉及情绪过程、认知过程和社会过程,包含了很多策略和技巧。自我调控理论强凋儿童的能动性和灵活性。气质特点可能是造成情绪调控过程中个体差异的一个重要因素,在儿童决定采取调控策略时起着重要的作用。自我调控与行为和社会问题关系密切,幼儿若存在自我调控能力的问题,在有冲突的情形下发生行为问题的倾向较高。     

童年早期社会能力的发展：一个潜变量增长模型

对119名幼儿进行历时两年的三次追踪测试, 采用潜变量增长建模, 检验童年早期的社会能力是否呈线性增长, 并考察气质、性别、母亲受教育程度及其交互作用对社会能力发展水平与速度的预测作用。结果发现：(1)社会能力在两年中呈线性增长, 起始水平及发展速度均存在显著的个体差异; (2)女孩起始的社会能力水平高于男孩; 母亲受教育程度越高, 儿童起始的社会能力水平就越高; (3)气质节律性对社会能力增长速度的预测因儿童性别而异：节律性能够负向预测女孩社会能力的增长速度、正向预测男孩社会能力的增长速度。     

Early Childhood Antecedents of Aggression and Passive-Withdrawal in Early Elementary School

Early childhood antecedents of elementary school aggression and passive-withdrawal were evaluated in a large longitudinal study (N = 191). With teacher ratings as outcome measures, a variety of predictor variables were selected from a comprehensive data base. Predictors were selected to represent several major factors: (a) a developmental history of insecure attachment and poor adjustment; (b) inadequate or hostile parental care; and (c) stressful or chaotic life circumstances. Support was found for the prediction of these behavior problems from early childhood measures (up to one third of the variance), with results varying with sex and outcome measure. Results were stronger for boys than girls, and stronger for aggression than for passive-withdrawal. Boys' outcome was strongly related to attachment classification at 18 months. It is suggested that these findings support Bowlby's view that early acquired "working models" of self and other affect later interpersonal functioning.     

Shared-Reading Volume in Early Childhood Special Education Classrooms

This study describes book reading practices occurring in early childhood special education (ECSE) classrooms in comparison to early childhood education (ECE) classrooms. Reading logs submitted by 19 ECSE teachers and 13 ECE teachers over one academic year included all books read in whole class settings; these logs were analyzed to assess the volume of book reading taking place and the types of books read. On average, ECSE teachers report reading less than one book per day and for less than seven minutes per day and ECSE teachers utilize far more narrative books than any other genre. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Parental Engagement in Early Childhood Education at Home

This study uses data from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy to identify relationships between parents’ demographic/socioeconomic backgrounds and their self-reported frequencies of engaging in early childhood education activities. It also examines race/ethnicity-related disparities in the frequency of reading to children and using interactive reading techniques after controlling for household income, nativity, and parents’ prose literacy skills. Regression analyses show that White parents are more likely than Black and Hispanic parents to report reading to their children frequently, while Black parents are more likely than White parents to report teaching the alphabet and pointing out words to children.     

The Gendering of Men in Early Childhood Education

In-depth interviews with men who work with young children as well as other key personnel in early childhood education (ECE) were analyzed using Ackers (1990) theory of gendered organizations along with Connells (1987) typology of masculinities. The conclusion reached is that ECE is indeed gendered in terms of the symbols in frequent use, the differential structural location of women and men, the internal mental work of individuals, and the interactions among individuals. In addition, instead of performing a complicit masculinity and enjoying some of the perquisites and privileges of hegemonic men, as other researchers have suggested, this project demonstrates that the men are attempting to live subordinate masculinities that could challenge traditional gender relations. Their attempts are, however, thwarted by the gender regime embedded in the occupational structure.     

Trauma in Early Childhood: A Neglected Population

Infants, toddlers and preschoolers are a high risk group for exposure to trauma. Young children are also vulnerable to experiencing adverse outcomes as they are undergoing a rapid developmental period, have limited coping skills and are strongly dependent on their primary caregiver to protect them physically and emotionally. However, although millions of young children experience trauma each year, this population has been largely neglected. Fortunately, over the last 2 decades there has been a growing appreciation of the magnitude of the problem with a small but expanding number of dedicated researchers and clinicians working with this population. This review examines the empirical literature on trauma in young children with regards to the following factors: (1) how trauma reactions typically manifest in young children; (2) history and diagnostic validity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in preschoolers; (3) prevalence, comorbidity and course of trauma reactions; (4) developmental considerations; (5) risk and protective factors; and (6) treatment. The review highlights that there are unique developmental differences in the rate and manifestation of trauma symptomatology, the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., DSM-IV-TR) PTSD criteria is not developmentally sensitive and the impact of trauma must be considered within the context of the parent–child relationship. Recommendations for future research with this population are also discussed.     

Low-Income Parental Risk and Engagement in Early Childhood and Child Social-Emotional Functioning in Middle Childhood

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The present study examined the association between fathers’ and mothers’ additive risk during early childhood and children’s social-emotional...