Moderating Effects of Mothers' Attribution on the Relationships Between Their Affect and Parenting Behaviors and Children's Aggressive Behaviors

We examined Bugental's (1987) transactional model in the context of the relationships between aggressive children and their mothers. Based on Bugental's model, it was hypothesized that mothers who possessed the attributional style of low self-control and high child-control over hypothetical child care failure were more likely to manifest negative affect and negative parenting behaviors toward their child, only when their child is aggressive. Children's aggressive behavior was assessed via mothers' and teachers' ratings. Sixty-six children and their mothers served as subjects. Our results provided support for mothers' negative affect when using teachers' rating of children's aggressive behaviors only. Possible explanations for the differential results obtained using mothers' and teachers' ratings of children's aggressive behaviors were discussed.     

Computerized games to study the development of attention in childhood

Children enjoy playing games. We can take advantage of this in the designs of computerized tasks that will engage their interest. These designs also serve to advance the study of chronometric measures, such as manual and saccadic reaction times and event related potentials, with young children. The goals of our method development are (1) to allow for comparable tasks across a wide variety of ages, (2) to make possible comparisons of child performance with data gathered in adult cognitive studies, and (3) to help to support inferences about the development of underlying mechanisms. We have designed a battery of computerized tasks in order to study the development of attention functions of alertness, orienting, and executive control during childhood. Our purpose is to describe each of these tasks in detail and present the results that have been obtained so far. The battery was tested using a sample of 5-year-old children as subjects.     

Individual differences in problem solving via insight

The purpose of the present work was to identify general problem solving skills that underlie the production of insight. One hundred and eighteen participants completed insight problems, analogies, series-completion problems and the Remote Associates Test. Scores on all measures were related to performance on the insight problems (Pearson r's ranged from .31 to .47, p < .008). These findings are consistent with the notion that the abilities to apprehend relations and fluency of thought are involved in insightful problem solving.