Strange situation behavior of infants with adolescent mothers

Forty 6-month-old infants and their adolescent mothers were observed interacting at home and in Ainsworth's Strange Situation procedure when the infants were 14 months old. There were significantly more A-group infants (45%) and fewer C-group infants (3%) at 14 months in this sample of adolescent mothers than in other samples of adult mothers. Furthermore, A-group attachments were more common when levels of dyadic engagement at 6 months had been lower, and future A-group infants were less vocal at 6 months than were future B-group infants. At 6 months, mothers of future B-group infants provided more care than did mothers of future A-group infants. These findings provide some support for claims that adolescent mothers provide parenting of lower quality than adult mothers and that quality of early interactions may predict subsequent infant behavior in the Strange Situation.     

Residential mobility, social support and adolescent self-concept

The effects of residential relocation on children has been a topic of interest to social science researchers for decades. Early research attributed school phobias, classroom behavior problems, lack of academic success, and poor peer relationships to residential mobility. Although most current literature has disputed many of these early findings, a question remains regarding the relationship between self-concept and residential relocation. Significant negative findings have been found in previous studies of this relationship. This study attempts to expand the research in two ways: first, by providing a theoretical framework and, second, by testing the role of social support from parents and peers as a mediator in the relationship. The investigation benefits from theory on life events and stress which guides the analysis of mobility and self-concept in a sample of 205 students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Findings indicate that social support attenuates a negative effect of mobility on specific measures of self-concept.     

Mexican-American adolescent sexuality and sexual knowledge: an exploratory study

This article reports the findings of a study designed to examine the sexual knowledge, attitudes, and practices of low-income Mexican- American adolescents. The participants in the study were all about to begin a sex education program in a community health organization in East Los Angeles. The study involved 84 adolescents aged 14-19, 97% of who identified themselves as Mexican-American (the remainder identified themselves as Latino). 51 of the subjects were female and 33 male. The participants completed a 43-item questionnaire concerning demographics, sexual experience and contraceptive use, knowledge of birth control methods, and attitudes towards sexuality and birth control. Only 18 (21%) of the subjects indicated ever having sex. But among this group, 83% reported not using contraception during their last intercourse, and 61% reported never using contraception. Only 22% reported using contraception regularly. Concerning the knowledge of different birth control methods,many of the participants were able to list several methods, but their responses indicated a lack of accurate and specific knowledge about contraceptive methods. In addition to the 43-item questionnaire, 27 of the subjects also completed a sexual and contraceptive knowledge questionnaire. The topics included contraceptive effectiveness, the menstrual cycle, and fertilization. The scores on the questionnaire were low, with an average score of 33% of correct answers. Finally, all 84 participants responded to a sexual attitude questionnaire, which revealed a generally traditional attitude toward the importance of have children, virginity, and the relationship between sex and love.     

The use of interrogative forms in the verbal interaction of three mothers and their children

A classification of interrogatives according to their purposes was devised and applied to four, 100-utterance samples by three mothers to their children when their children had a mean utterance length of (1) two morphemes and (2) four morphemes. The distribution of mothers' utterances into interrogative and noninterrogative types and into the classification of interrogatives by purpose was obtained. Interrogatives comprise from 15 to 33% of mothers' utterances and interrogatives whose purpose is not to ask questions but rather to make suggestions, negative evaluations of the child's behavior, or to make reports occur with all mothers. A study of these mothers' children's interrogatives in the three-morpheme period revealed that at this early period in language development children already use the interrogative form analogously to their mothers for making suggestions and reports. An analysis of the development of this capacity based on the concept of the speech act is given which leads to the conclusion that it is the embeddedness of verbalizations in a particular personal relations, action context which fosters this development.     

Students' knowledge of AIDS and sexual risk behavior.

College students appear to be knowledgeable of the methods of transmission and risks of the AIDS virus. However, the reality of susceptibility to infection does not seem to have altered their conduct. In a study of 19 heterosexual college students, knowledge and intention do not appear to be good predictors of sexual behavior. Young people appear to continue high-risk sexual behavior even while knowledgeable of the risks of AIDS.     

Family interaction and acting-out behavior of adolescent psychiatric patients

Although the literature has described how families reinforce and contribute to acting out by adolescents, this phenomena has not previously been studied within the psychiatric hospital. The present study systematically investigated whether family interaction influences the acting-out behavior of hospitalized adolescent psychiatric patients. Data was collected from the clinical charts of 94 adolescents, each hospitalized for over 30 days. The results supported the contention that families do contribute to acting out in the hospital. However, a majority of the acting out was not directly related to family contact. The research highlights how the hospital can serve to offset negative influences by engaging the family in treatment and by considering family contact during treatment planning.     

Support networks of adolescent mothers: Effects on parenting experience and behavior

The relation between social support and lower-income African-American adolescent mothers' parenting experience, parenting behavior, and psychological symptoms was studied. Larger support networks were associated with better maternal adjustment unless individuals providing support were also providers of conflict. The young women's own mothers were their most prominent providers of support, and the number of different types of support the grandmother provided was related positively to quality of the adolescent's parenting behavior, but negatively to her experience of parenting. Having more friends in the network was related to better parenting behavior, but having more siblings in the network was related to poorer parenting behavior as well as more psychological symptoms. Although most of the young women relied on male partners for support, no variables related to provision of support by male partners were correlated with maternal adjustment.     

Logic, reasoning, and verbal behavior

This paper analyzes the traditional concepts of logic and reasoning from the perspective of radical behaviorism and in the terms of Skinner's treatment of verbal behavior. The topics covered in this analysis include the proposition, premises and conclusions, logicality and rules, and deductive and inductive reasoning.     

Correspondence training, prior verbal training, and control of nonverbal behavior via control of verbal behavior

The role of prior verbal training in correspondence training and later verbal control of nonverbal behavior was examined in two groups of Head Start children. One group received correspondence training without prior verbal training, the other with. Essentially no differences were found between the two sequences; thus it seems appropriate to consider the content phases (reinforcement contingent on target verbalization alone) of previous research as control procedures and not a necessary precursor to correspondence training.     

The relationship between adolescent attitudes towards authority, self-concept, and delinquency

Attitudes towards authority of youth and adults have been investigated in recent years in a number of Western countries. The present research focused on attitudes towards institutional authority among three groups of adolescents: nondelinquents, noninstitutionalized delinquents, and institutionalized delinquents. Relationships with self-concept were also investigated. It was found that attitudes towards parents, teachers, police, and the law were, in general, positive. Nondelinquents' attitudes were more positive than those of delinquents.     

Dating age and stage as correlates of adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior

Dating experiences, especially the type or stage of dating, have consistently been found to be related to premarital sexual behavior. Findings regarding the age at 1st date and sexual behavior have been less consistent. This paper examined the age at which dating began and the type of dating relationship as correlates of premarital sexual attitudes and behavior among mid-teen adolescents. The analyses were based on a sample of high school students (n=836), most of whom were between the ages of 15 and 18 when the surveys were conducted. Early dating, especially early steady dating, was related to permissive attitudes and to premarital sexual experience among both males and females. The relationship between early dating and intercourse experience was particulary strong among Mormons, a religious group which has institutionalized age 16 as the legitimate age to begin dating.     

An investigation of intelligence,self-concept,socioeconomic status,race, and sex as predictors of career maturity

A multiple regression procedure was used to develop a further understanding of the relationship of self-concept (SC), intelligence (IQ), socioeconomic status (SES), and race, and sex to career maturity as measured by the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI). Subjects included in the study were 266 twelfth-graders [46 black males (BM), 50 black females (BF), 92 white males (WM), and 78 white females (WF)]. The results suggested that when predicting career maturity as measured by the CMI, a separate equation utilizing different predictors, depending on race and sex of subjects should be considered. Results further indicated that socio-economic status and self-concept seem to have a differential effect upon career maturity.     

Parenting stress, perceived parenting behaviors, and adolescent self-concept in European American families

This study assesses whether the stresses associated with parenting a child are indirectly related to adolescent self-concept through parenting behaviors. We examined longitudinal associations among mothers' and fathers' parenting stress at age 10, children's perceptions of parenting at age 10, and adolescents' self-concept at age 14 in 120 European American families. Mothers' and fathers' parenting stress was related to children's perceptions of acceptance and psychologically controlling behavior, and psychologically controlling behavior (and lax control for fathers) was related to adolescent self-concept. We further examined which domains of parenting stress and perceived parenting behaviors were associated with adolescents' scholastic competence, social acceptance, physical appearance, and behavioral conduct. Parenting stress was related to specific parenting behaviors, which were, in turn, related to specific domains of self-concept in adolescence. Parenting stress appears to exert its effects on early adolescent self-concept indirectly through perceived parenting behavior.     

A multi-perspective multi-domain model of self-concept: structure and sources of self-concept knowledge

A perspective-specific model which deals with the sources of self-concept knowledge as construed by two theories (symbolic interaction and social comparison) was combined with Shavelson's domain-specific model to form a two-facet model of self-concept. The structure of this two-facet model was tapped by a new self-concept instrument, the Multi-Perspective Multi-Domain Self-Concept Inventory (MMSI), which was constructed by crossing domain and perspective facets. Results of confirmatory factor analysis by grade level of the data from a large sample of primary two, four, and six students lent support to the multi-perspective multi-domain model. The MMSI facilitates the estimation of (a) the differential contribution of domain and perspective factors, and (b) the differential contribution of different sources of self-concept knowledge. It also serves as an exemplar of an interesting application of the multi-trait multi-method model in confirmatory factor analysis.     

The influence of male and female best friends on adolescent sexual behavior

Using panel data from a junior high school system in an urban area of Florida, we examine whether adolescents' best same-sex and best opposite-sex friends' sexual intercourse behavior increases the likelihood that respondents who are virgins at round 1 will make the transition to intercourse between rounds of our study. We find no significant influence effects of friends of either sex for black males or females, or white males. In contrast, white females are influenced by the sexual behavior of both their best female friend and best male friend. A virgin white female whose best friends of both sexes were sexually experience at round 1 was almost certain to have sexual intercourse within the two years of our study.     

CHRM2, parental monitoring, and adolescent externalizing behavior: evidence for gene-environment interaction

Psychologists, with their long-standing tradition of studying mechanistic processes, can make important contributions to further characterizing the risk associated with genes identified as influencing risk for psychiatric disorders. We report one such effort with respect to CHRM2, which codes for the cholinergic muscarinic 2 receptor and was of interest originally for its association with alcohol dependence. We tested for association between CHRM2 and prospectively measured externalizing behavior in a longitudinal, community-based sample of adolescents, as well as for moderation of this association by parental monitoring. We found evidence for an interaction in which the association between the genotype and externalizing behavior was stronger in environments with lower parental monitoring. There was also suggestion of a crossover effect, in which the genotype associated with the highest levels of externalizing behavior under low parental monitoring had the lowest levels of externalizing behavior at the extreme high end of parental monitoring. The difficulties involved in distinguishing mechanisms of gene-environment interaction are discussed.