Mothers' Overreactive Discipline and Their Encoding and Appraisals of Toddler Behavior

The relations of observed overreactive discipline with mothers' tendencies to notice negative, relative to positive, child behavior (preferential negative encoding), and mothers' negative appraisals of neutral and positive child behavior (negative appraisal bias), were examined in mothers of toddlers. The mothers rated both their own children's and unfamiliar children's behavior. Negative appraisal bias with respect to mothers' own (but not unfamiliar) children was related to mothers' overreactivity, independent of child misbehavior. Overreactivity was not related to mothers' preferential negative encoding either of their own or of unfamiliar children's behavior. However, in the case of mothers' own children, preferential negative encoding moderated the relation between negative appraisal bias and overreactive discipline, such that the negative appraisal bias-overreactivity relation was significant only in the context of high preferential negative encoding.     

Stress and Coping: A Comparison of Self-Report Measures of Functioning in Families of Young Children with Cerebral Palsy or No Medical Diagnosis

We analyzed data from 87 mothers of children ages 15 to 44 months with cerebral palsy (CP) or no diagnosis, who completed the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, Parenting Stress Index, Support Functions Scale, and Inventory of Social Support. Principal components analysis of the 15 subscales from the 5 measures revealed few cross-measure loadings. Mothers of children with CP (severe or mild) reported higher levels of parenting stress than did mothers of controls. However, cluster analysis of self-report measures yielded a 5-cluster solution, with no diagnostic group differences across clusters. That is, there were no overall differences in self-reported family functioning according to presence or severity of the child's disability. The results are discussed in terms of the organization of family systems and their relationship to child diagnosis. Clinical implications for assessing and working with families are noted.     

Making peace in gestational conflicts

Mary Anne Warren's claim that there is room for only one person with full and equal rights inside a single human skin ([1], p. 63) calls attention to the vast range of moral conflict engendered by assigning full basic moral rights to fetuses. Thereby, it serves as a goad to thinking about conflicts between pregnant women and their fetuses in a way that emphasizes relationships rather than rights. I sketch out what a care orientation might suggest about resolving gestational conflicts. I also argue that the care orientation, with its commitment to the significance of the partial and the particular, cannot be absorbed within standard, impartialist moral theory.     

Cognitive conflict and inhibition in primed dichotic listening

In previous behavioral studies, a prime syllable was presented just prior to a dichotic syllable pair, with instructions to ignore the prime and report one syllable from the dichotic pair. When the prime matched one of the syllables in the dichotic pair, response selection was biased towards selecting the unprimed target. The suggested mechanism was that the prime was inhibited to reduce conflict between task-irrelevant prime processing and task-relevant dichotic target processing, and a residual effect of the prime inhibition biased the resolution of the conflict between the two targets. The current experiment repeated the primed dichotic listening task in an event-related fMRI setting. The fMRI data showed that when the task-irrelevant prime matched the task-relevant targets, activations in posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) and in right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) increased, which was considered to represent conflict and inhibition, respectively. Further, matching trials where the unprimed target was selected showed activation in right IFG, while matching trials where the primed target was selected showed activations in pMFC and left IFG, indicating the difference between inhibition-biased selection and unbiased selection.     

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.     

Whose Gene Is It? A Case Discussion About Familial Conflict over Genetic Testing for Breast Cancer

A multidisciplinary group of genetic and other professionals discuss a complex case of familial conflict over access to genetic information. One twin wishes to know the results of her deceased mother's tests for BRCA1 mutations; a second twin objects to researchers making this information available. As the case discussion unfolds, the apparent facts of this case are called into question and the lines of ethical certainty become less clear.     

The Development of the Toddler Behavior Screening Inventory

The purpose of the present study was to develop the Toddler Behavior Screening Inventory (TBSI) for rapidly assessing maternal reports of toddler behavior problems. The TBSI is a 40-item measure intended for use by pediatricians, psychologists, and other child-care professionals. A group of mothers (n = 312) rated the initial 93-item TBSI in terms of behavior frequency and parental perception of the behavior as problematic. Following item elimination, 40 items were retained due to being both frequent and problematic at all toddler age levels. Data were obtained with a new sample of mothers (n = 581) and showed the TBSI to possess good reliability and validity.     

Order of Attainment of the Mental Structures for Five of Piaget's Logical,Infralogical, and Formal Tasks

This study explored the relationship between illegitimate birth and cognitive development among 513 boys on probation. Prior research has shown that being part of a single-parent household leads to diminished verbal capacities and often puts a child in greater danger of abuse and neglect. Frequent abuse is thought to lead to the enhancement of visual and spatial skills relative to verbal skills through a process of “frozen watchfulness”. I hypothesized that illegitimate boys from one-parent homes would have greater verbal-performance discrepancy scores than would boys from other combinations of birth status and family structure. These boys had the lowest verbal IQ and highest performance IQ scores and, hence, the largest discrepancy. These boys also suffered the highest degree of abuse and neglect of all four birth status/family structure combinations studied.     

A 'quantum' of truth in a field of lies: the investigation of emotional truth in a child analysis

Following Bion’s ideas of analytical research the author intends to consider the need to pursue emotional truth between patient and psychotherapist in order to produce a psychological development. It is shown through the analysis of a child how emotional falsification can distort first of all the definition of the child identity. Successively the attention is focused on how lies, as an unconscious element that twist the research of the truth, obstruct the development of thoughts able to transform emotions.Using a quantisation physical model of space, the author hypothesises that the transformation of β elements in α elements is always in an unstable equilibrium. The distortion of emotional truth co‐produced by lies affects the oscillation β?α at a primitive level of transformation, changing the “physical” state of the analytical field from conductor to insulator. The most important consequence of the particular point of view suggested by the quantistic model is that in the third analytical space the same definition of α elements or β elements depends on the analyst’s point of view. This change of perspective can vitalise the analytical thinking of patient and analyst during an impasse.