The development of intergroup bias in childhood: how social norms can shape children's racial behaviours

The present research examined the developmental course of racial behaviours in childhood. It tested the hypothesis that White children's expressions of racial prejudice do not necessarily decline in middle childhood due to the development of particular cognitive skills but that instead, as argued by the socio-normative approach, children older than seven will go on expressing prejudiced attitudes under appropriate conditions. This would be explained by the presence of an anti-racism norm, along with the existence of values promoting equal rights, which impede blatant expressions of racism. In the first study 283 White children aged 6-7 and 9-10 years performed a task of resource allocation to White and Black target children in conditions of high (White interviewer was present) or low (White interviewer was absent) salience of the anti-racist norm. The 6- to 7-year-old children discriminated against the Black target in both conditions whereas older children discriminated against the Black child only when the anti-racist norm was not salient. In Study 2, 187 White children aged 6-7 and 9-10 years performed the same resource allocation task in conditions of explicit activation of similarity vs dissimilarity or egalitarian vs merit-based norms regarding race relations. Supporting the hypothesis of the role of racist or anti-racist norms on the expression of intergroup discrimination, results have again shown that 6- to 7-year-old children discriminated against the Black target in both conditions while older children presented significantly different prejudiced/nonprejudiced behaviours consistent with the activated norms. These results were discussed in terms of the need for a reanalysis of the assumptions and research results of the cognitive-developmental theory and of further developments in the socio-normative approach regarding the development of prejudice in childhood.     

East Asian child-rearing attitudes: an exploration of cultural, demographic and self-disclosure factors among US immigrants

Child-rearing attitudes among East Asian groups have been emphasized in the developmental psychology literature in the context of their association with academic achievement. Although child-rearing attitudes play an important role in the transmission of cultural values, much of the research on East Asian child-rearing attitudes has ignored cultural variables and has instead focused on authoritarian parenting style. The current study examined the association between three classes of variables-culture (i.e., ethnic identity, self-construal, acculturation), demographics (sex, years in the US, English fluency), and self-disclosure-and traditional child-rearing attitudes (TCRA) among East Asian immigrants in the United States. It was hypothesized that higher levels of TCRA would be associated with higher levels of ethnic identity, interdependent self-construal, separation, and guarded self-disclosure, and fewer years spent in the United States. The participants included 170 East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) immigrants (88 men, 82 women) who were administered a battery of psychometrically established measures. Our hypotheses were largely supported. We found that, while there was no significant sex by ethnicity effect for TCRA, men were significantly more likely than women to endorse TCRA and the Korean group had significantly higher TCRA than the Japanese group. Ethnic identity, interdependent self-construal, separation, years in the US, and guarded self-disclosure were significant independent predictors of TCRA. The findings suggest the need for broadening the content of assessment tools of child-rearing attitudes and measuring associated cultural and noncultural variables among East Asian ethnic groups. Future research on child-rearing attitudes among Asian ethnic groups may benefit from (1) measuring multiple dimensions of TCRA, (2) assessing associated cultural variables directly rather than inferring them in an ad hoc fashion based on observed ethnicity differences, (3) measurement of demography (including sex and years spent in the host country) and (4) examining the potential influence of guarded self-disclosure.     

Interpersonal attachment predicts identification with groups

We propose a model documenting the relationship between interpersonal attachment style and identification with groups. We hypothesized that following threat to a romantic interpersonal relationship higher attachment anxiety would be associated with lowered tendencies to identify with groups. In two studies using varied social groups we observed support for this hypothesis. In Experiment 1 we found that participants higher in attachment anxiety identified less with a salient ingroup after imagining a distressing argument with their romantic partner. In Experiment 2 we replicated these findings using an implicit measure of social identification and additionally observed a moderating role for attachment avoidance. We discuss the implications of these findings for theoretical models of interpersonal attachment and social identification.     

Mediating and Moderating Processes in the Relation between Maltreatment and Psychopathology: Mother-Child Relationship Quality and Emotion Regulation

The present study investigated underlying processes of the effect of maltreatment on psychopathology (i.e., internalizing and externalizing problems) in a group of 111 maltreated and 110 nonmaltreated 7–10 year-old children (60% boys). We tested the moderating and/or mediating roles of emotion regulation and the mother-child relationship quality (pattern of relatedness) using Structural Equation Modeling. Emotion regulation, but not the pattern of relatedness, mediated the relation between maltreatment and psychopathology. This mediation was moderated by the pattern of relatedness: For the group of children with an insecure pattern of relatedness, maltreatment was related to lower levels of emotion regulation, which was predictive of higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptomatology. In contrast, for the secure relatedness group, there was no mediation by emotion regulation since the impact of maltreatment on emotion regulation was not significant. Implications of the mediating role of emotion regulation and the buffering role of the mother-child relationship quality were discussed.

Attachment representations in mothers of preterm infants

The aim of the study was to assess attachment representations in mothers of preterm infants using the Working Model of Child Interview (WMCI) at the 12 months of the infant's corrected age. In addition, the relation between WMCI representation categories and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale score at 6 months of the infant's corrected age was studied. There were 38 mothers of preterm infants (<1500 g or <32 gestational weeks) and 45 mothers of full-term infants. The results showed no differences between the study groups in the distribution of the three main representation categories (balanced, disengaged and distorted). However, there were qualitative differences in representations between the groups. Furthermore, maternal depression symptoms were associated with distorted representation category. We suggest that despite the qualitative differences in the mothers’ representations, mothers of preterm infants are as likely to form balanced attachments with their infants as mothers of full-term infants.     

Adult attachment, perceived stress, and PTSD among civilians exposed to ongoing terrorist attacks in Southern Israel

This study examined the relationships among exposure to terrorism, individual differences in adult attachment dimensions, perceived stress, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A representative sample of 254 adults who had experienced more than 7 years of ongoing exposure (OGE) to rocket and mortar fire in southern Israel was compared to 308 individuals with no exposure (NE) to terrorism. OGE individuals reported significantly elevated levels of insecure attachment, perceived stress, and PTSD-symptoms as compared to the NE individuals. The associations between perceived stress and PTSD-symptoms were significantly stronger in the OGE group, compared to the NE group. For OGE individuals, the elevated level of perceived stress mediated the association between Attachment Anxiety and PTSD-symptoms. Theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.     

A semantics-based approach to the "no negative evidence" problem

Previous studies have shown that children retreat from argument-structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., * Don't giggle me ) by inferring that frequently encountered verbs are unlikely to be grammatical in unattested constructions, and by making use of syntax-semantics correspondences (e.g., verbs denoting internally caused actions such as giggling cannot normally be used causatively). The present study tested a new account based on a unitary learning mechanism that combines both of these processes. Seventy-two participants (ages 5–6, 9–10, and adults) rated overgeneralization errors with higher (* The funny man's joke giggled Bart ) and lower (* The funny man giggled Bart ) degrees of direct external causation. The errors with more-direct causation were rated as less unacceptable than those with less-direct causation. This finding is consistent with the new account, under which children acquire—in an incremental and probabilistic fashion—the meaning of particular constructions (e.g., transitive causative = direct external causation) and particular verbs, rejecting generalizations where the incompatibility between the two is too great.     

Adult Attachment in Children Raised by Parents with Schizophrenia

Maternal schizophrenia is known to have an adverse effect on the quality of mother–infant interaction; and children of parents with severe mental illness run a higher risk of poor mental health and social outcomes. Hence, children raised by a parent with schizophrenia may be less likely to attain secure attachment, although there is less evidence so far to support this. Moreover, there is a lack of research in this field that focusses on the needs and experiences, the strengths and vulnerabilities, of the children themselves. Qualitative methods are thus needed to generate new insights and hypotheses. The present study uses semi-structured interviews with 23 adults who, as children, were raised with a parent who experienced schizophrenia. This reveals a range of attachment problems, resulting in difficulties in forming secure adult relationships. Problems with trust and intimacy were found to be common.     

The Relationship Between Caregiver Capacity and Intensive Community Treatment for Children with a Mental Health Crisis

We studied 9,220 children referred to a comprehensive mental health crisis stabilization program to examine the impact of caregiver capacity on crisis worker decisions to refer children for intensive community-based treatment as opposed to inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. Due to the different role of caregivers in the child welfare system, analyses were stratified by state custody status. Among both groups, there was a significant inverse association between child mental health need and referral to intensive community-based treatment. For children not in state custody with low mental health need, there was no difference in the likelihood of referral to intensive community-based treatment across levels of caregiver capacity. However, for children not in state custody with medium and high mental health needs, those whose caregivers were deficient or severely deficient were significantly more likely to be referred for intensive community-based treatment than were those who had capable caregivers. Multivariate analyses demonstrated similar results after controlling for potential confounding variables and confirmed that caregiver capacity contributes significantly to the logistic model’s classification accuracy. Results suggest further investigation of the impact of caregiver capacity on mental health crisis worker referral decisions is needed.     

The Mediating Effects of Parenting Behaviors on Maternal Affect and Reports of Children’s Behavior

Parenting behaviors have received ample support as a mediator of the relationship between maternal affect and child behavior problems. The majority of these research efforts were based on a uni-dimensional conceptualization of maternal mood, even though decades of theory and research suggest that mood is multidimensional. We examined the mediating role of parenting behaviors on positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) and reports of child behavior problems. Evidence for mediation was demonstrated for both PA and NA for children in early to middle childhood. Consistent with the positive psychology movement, our results suggest that maternal PA plays an important role in parents’ utilization of effective parenting behaviors. Implications for clinical intervention and future research are discussed.