Making faces: testing the relation between child behavior problems and mothers' interpretations of child emotion expressions

We examined the relations between preschool boys' behavior problems and mothers' interpretations of children's emotion expressions. A sample of 31 mothers of oppositional boys and 28 control mothers responded to standard stimuli depicting child emotional reactions to maternal control attempts; mothers were instructed to think of the stimuli as either (a) their own child or (b) an unfamiliar child. Mothers of oppositional boys were more likely to generate negative interpretations than were control mothers when thinking of their own children; however, this difference did not generalize to the explicitly unfamiliar child condition. Mothers of oppositional boys demonstrated negative and comparison mothers demonstrated positive interpretive tendencies toward their own children. Findings suggest that child emotion cues may trigger biased maternal cognitions even in the absence of child misbehavior.     

Interaction of emotion and cognition in word recall

Summary Previous research has demonstrated that the emotional properties of words and their imaginability affect their recallability and that verbal material is recalled better when it is related to subjects' current concerns. This study investigates the extent to which this effect of emotion on recall varies as a function of cognitively controllable inference processes and examines the relation of the effects of emotion to those of imaginability and concern-relatedness. Forty different words were presented visually under one of six orienting conditions that varied according to what the subject was asked to rate: their length, pronounceability, concreteness, defineability, the strength of emotion elicited by the word, and the relation of the word to personal concerns. Subjects were then asked to write as many words as they could recall. Words that aroused stronger emotion and were easier to represent in imagery were recalled better than emotionally less arousing and imaginally less evocative words, regardless of the nature of the orienting task. The evidence suggests that the emotional properties of words are evaluated automatically in an early processing stage, without requiring subjects to reflect on word content. Emotional arousal appears to mediate the effects of current concerns on recall. It is correlated with but appears to function independently of word imaginability.     

Social anxiety and interpretation biases for facial displays of emotion: emotion detection and ratings of social cost

The current study assessed the processing of facial displays of emotion (Happy, Disgust, and Neutral) of varying emotional intensities in participants with high vs. low social anxiety. Use of facial expressions of varying intensities allowed for strong external validity and a fine-grained analysis of interpretation biases. Sensitivity to perceiving negative evaluation in faces (i.e., emotion detection) was assessed at both long (unlimited) and brief (60 ms) stimulus durations. In addition, ratings of perceived social cost were made indicating what participants judged it would be like to have a social interaction with a person exhibiting the stimulus emotion. Results suggest that high social anxiety participants did not demonstrate biases in their sensitivity to perceiving negative evaluation (i.e. disgust) in facial expressions. However, high social anxiety participants did estimate the perceived cost of interacting with someone showing disgust to be significantly greater than low social anxiety participants, regardless of the intensity of the disgust expression. These results are consistent with a specific type of interpretation bias in which participants with social anxiety have elevated ratings of the social cost of interacting with individuals displaying negative evaluation.     

Eliciting emotion ratings for a set of film clips: A preliminary archive for research in emotion

ABSTRACT

Film clips are commonly used to elicit subjectively experienced emotional states for many research purposes, but film clips currently available in databases are out of date, include a limited set of emotions, and/or pertain to only one conceptualization of emotion. This work reports validation data from two studies aimed to elicit basic and complex emotions (amusement, anger, anxiety, compassion, contentment, disgust, fear, happiness/joy, irritation, neutrality, pride, relief, sadness, surprise), equally distributed according to valence (positive, negative) and intensity (high, low). Participants rated film clips according to the degree of experienced emotion, and for valence and arousal. Our findings initiate an iterative archive of film clips shown here to discretely elicit 11 different emotions. Although further validation of these film clips is needed, ratings provided here should assist researchers in selecting potential film clips to meet the aims of their work.     

BRIEF REPORT Bilinguals' recall and recognition of emotion words

Recall of emotion words is superior to neutral words. Prior work reported in this journal (Anooshian & Hertel, 1994) found that this effect was absent in a second language. Words in a second language may thus lack the emotional associations of words acquired in childhood. To determine whether memory probes may be generally useful for assessing emotionality effects in a first versus a second language, Anooshian and Hertel's paradigm was extended in several ways. Recall was compared to recognition, and a variety of types of emotion words were studied, including taboo terms, and phrases likely to be learned in childhood (reprimands). Superior memory for emotion words was obtained in both the recall and recognition tasks, but this occurred in both the first and second language and indeed was stronger, for some stimuli, in the second language. This suggests that, even for bilingual speakers who acquire their second late (after age 12), words in the second language retain rich emotional associations.     

Agreement of mothers' and teachers' hyperactivity ratings with scores on drug-sensitive psychological tests

Hyperactivity ratings were obtained from parents and teachers for 45 hyperactive children. The children were also given several psychological tests. Teachers' ratings, but not parents' ratings, were negatively correlated with performance on the psychological tests that require sustained attention and on which performance is improved by stimulant drugs. This pattern of correlations was interpreted as evidence that teachers, but not parents, have an opportunity to observe children performing daily tasks that require sustained attention.     

Validity and reliability of visual ratings of the vertical jump

The validity and reliability of visual estimates of the kinematics of the vertical jump as would be common in qualitative analysis of human movement was studied. Sagittal plane videotapes of 12 females performing vertical jumps were rated on two occasions by three samples of subjects: 6 basketball coaches, 10 kinesiology students, and 5 kinesiology professors. Visual ratings were compared to values quantified by biomechanical analysis using the Peak Performance Technologies system. Assistant collegiate basketball coaches were unable to rate discrete body angles in the vertical jump accurately or consistently. Six of 10 college student raters could accurately and consistently rate over-all range of motion. Since only one of the kinesiology professors could accurately and consistently rate range of motion compared to the majority of the students, professional experience did not affect the ability to rate range of motion in the vertical jump in these subjects.     

Parental affect and childrearing beliefs uniquely predict mothers' and fathers' ratings of children's behavior problems

The focus of this study was to examine the relations between parental characteristics and ratings of children's behavior problems. Although there is a considerable body of research that indicates that parental reports of children's behavior are biased by the characteristics of the parent, a number of limitations of past research have precluded definitive conclusions about the impact of individual characteristics. This study examined the role of parental affect and childrearing beliefs in determining parental ratings of child behavior in a selected sample of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. A series of analyses was specified in which teachers' and co-parents' ratings were controlled to examine the unique associations between parental characteristics and ratings of child behavior. After controlling for the co-parents' and teachers' ratings, both mothers' and fathers' psychological characteristics uniquely contributed to variation in their ratings of children's behavior problems. The specific affective and childrearing belief variables that accounted for variation in parental ratings varied by parent sex and the broadband rating analyzed. These analyses indicate the role that rater-specific characteristics may play in determining parents' assessments of child behavior.     

Similarities and differences in mothers' and observers' ratings of infant security on the Attachment Q-Sort

This study examined the similarities and differences in maternal and observer Attachment Behavior Q-Sort ratings (AQS; Waters, 1995) and their relations to dimensions of the developmental ecology - maternal sensitivity, infant irritability, parental stress and psychosocial risk. Data was gathered from low risk (adult mothers; N=44) and high risk mother-infant dyads (adolescent mothers; N=83) when infants were aged 6, 10 and 15 months old, attachment being assessed at 15 months by both mothers and independent observers. A common factor was extracted from both sorts and served to operationalize the similarities between mother and observer ratings. Regressions were conducted to extract maternal and observer AQS scores that were unrelated to each other to represent the difference between the two sorts. Correlation analyses indicated that the common AQS factor was moderately linked to maternal sensitivity and parental stress, and showed a weak association to psychosocial risk and infant irritability. Residual maternal scores showed greater correlations with infant irritability and parental stress than did observer residual scores. Observer scores showed a greater correlation with psychosocial risk than maternal scores. Results suggest that common AQS variance presents a pattern of associations with ecological variables that is coherent with attachment research. Variance related to irritability, stress and risk appear to drive the differences between maternal and observer observations.     

Effects of concreteness and semantic relatedness on composite imagery ratings and cued recall

Day and Bellezza (1983) rejected a dual coding imagery explanation for the superior recall of concrete words because unrelated concrete pairs were rated lower in composite imagery but were still remembered better than related abstract pairs. We show that dual coding theory explains their results and our new findings using the same paradigm. In Experiment 1, 120 subjects rated imagery or relatedness for 108 pairs that varied in concreteness, pair relatedness, and associative strength. Incidental cued recall followed. Relatedness and strength affected imagery ratings, as did concreteness, and very low relatedness partly accounted for the low composite imagery ratings for unrelated concrete pairs. Concreteness and relatedness also affected recall, and suporior recall for unrelated concrete pairs occurred consistently under imagery but not under relatedness instructions. In Experiment 2, 40 subjects rated imagery value and recalled 24 pairs. Subsequent questioning indicated that composite images were retrieved better given stimuli from unrelated concrete than from related abstract pairs. These findings and Day and Bellezza’s original results are explained in terms of (1) imaginal and verbal associative processes, which jointly influence composite imagery ratings and recall, and (2) the critical role of stimulus concreteness during image retrieval and recall (i.e., the conceptual peg hypothesis).     

American-Japanese cultural differences in intensity ratings of facial expressions of emotion

Findings from a recent study by Ekmanet al. (1987) provided evidence for cultural disagreement about the intensity ratings of universal facial expressions of emotion. We conducted a study that examined the basis of these cultural differences. Japanese and American subjects made two separate intensity ratings of Japanese and Caucacian posers portraying anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The Americans had higher mean intensity ratings than the Japanese for all emotions except disgust, regardless of the culture or gender of the poser. Americans gave happy and angry photos the highest intensity ratings, while Japanese gave disgust photos the highest ratings. But there was considerable cross-cultural consistency in the relative differences among photos.This study was conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation by the first author, under the supervision of the second author. David Matsumoto was supported by a minority fellowship from the American Psychological Association, under a Clinical Training Grant from NIMH (MH13833), and by a Regents Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley. Paul Ekman was supported by a Research Scientist Award from NIMH (MH06092).We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of Wallace V. Friesen to the development of the facial stimuli used in this study, Tsutomu Kudoh for his aid in collecting the Japanese data, and Wallace Friesen and Maureen O'Sullivan for their aid during data analysis.     

Defining child maltreatment: ratings of parental behaviors

This study investigated adolescents' assessment of various forms of child abuse and neglect. Participants (N = 204) rated the seriousness of vignettes describing a variety of parental actions relative to the degree of harm each was perceived to have on a child's welfare. Adolescents' responses were compared to those of community members and professionals as reported by Giovannoni and Becerra (1979). Results indicated that adolescents were somewhat similar to community members in their ratings; however, they were more severe in their judgments of parenting behaviors on 52 of the 65 items. As a group, adolescents were very critical of the parents' actions, suggesting that they are highly idealistic regarding parental treatment of children and may maintain inappropriate expectations for those responsible for raising children.     

Effects of mothers' locus of control for child improvement in a developmentally delayed sample

A potentially important variable that has received little attention in the literature is the locus of control (LOC) a caregiver holds for child improvement, including its influence on the caregiver's treatment compliance and on actual child improvement. In this study, 131 mother-child dyads were assessed across 1 year, to evaluate the utility of the LOC construct in a practice setting. Children were approximately 4 years old at the first assessment, and all of them had been diagnosed with a developmental disability. Mothers' compliance with treatment (mothers' attendance at sessions; teachers' ratings of mothers' support and knowledge) was tracked, and measures of child development status and mothers' locus of control were administered. Statistical results indicated that mothers' locus of control was not significantly correlated with children's gains in development over the year. The mothers' beliefs about whether the child or chance would be responsible for improvement were associated with lower compliance with treatment, whereas the mothers' beliefs that child improvement was attributable to professional intervention were associated with enhanced involvement in treatment.     

Observations of families in structured interactions: Parenting therapists provide reliable ratings of mothers' parenting

The reliability of observations of parenting by parenting therapists was assessed. An important predictor of externalizing behavior in children is quality of parenting. Data were videotapes of structured interactions in families with a child age 8–12 years referred to the evidence based Parent Management Training Oregon (PMTO) treatment program for child behavior problems. The therapists had clinical PMTO training but no training in systematic observation. PMTO observational coders with specific coder training were included as a reference for the therapists. Five therapists and two coders observed videotapes of 10 families and performed global evaluations of mothers' parenting skills. They used the coder's impression measure used in PMTO research. Scores were analyzed in a generalizability theory framework for the two groups of observers separately. Both observer types reliably rank‐ordered the mothers and assessed the level of parenting skills. PMTO therapists without coder training provided reliable ratings of parenting constructs relevant to the clinical PMTO program in a manner comparable to that of the trained reference coders.     

Increasing adolescent mothers' knowledge of child development: an intervention program

This study focused upon an intervention program that allowed adolescent mothers to have major input in identifying knowledge they needed concerning their children's growth and their own parenting skills. Seventy-six females participated in the 4-month program. A pretest-posttest design was used to measure changes in self-esteem, knowledge of child development, and tendencies toward inappropriate interactions with children. Analysis of effectiveness of this program indicated that it had been effective. Results revealed significant differences between pre- and posttest measures of child development knowledge in the areas of infant and toddler development. Further analysis indicated a significant change in the subjects' child abuse potential at the end of the program. No significant difference could be found in measures of self-esteem between the beginning and end of the program. A 10-month follow-up study coordinated between two public agencies found that none of the adolescent parents who had completed the program had been reported for child abuse or neglect. The results support the importance of short-term intervention programs for adolescent parents.