Attachment Security,Personality, and Adjustment of Elementary School Children

Children's development is assumed to be closely related to their attachment security and their personality. The authors’ aim was to examine the joint contribution of attachment security and personality traits to children's adjustment by examining diverse children's outcomes (emotional symptoms, social functioning, and behavioral problems) and using various perspectives (children, parents, and teachers). The sample comprised 247 8–12-year-old children from low socioeconomic status neighborhoods. Personality and attachment contribute to the different domains of adjustment. In cases of moderation, attachment security moderates the implications of personality traits on children's adjustment. The findings highlight the contribution of positive personality tendencies in playing down the difficulties of insecurely attached children.     

Theory of Mind Understanding and Conversational Patterns in Middle Childhood

The author investigated the longitudinal relations between theory of mind (ToM) understanding and perceptions of self and social conversations in 17 school-aged children (12 girls, 5 boys, age 8–12 years). ToM was assessed at Time 1 (T1; M age = 8 years 5 months, SD = 8.7 months, and perceptions of self and conversational experiences assessed two years later at Time 2 (T2; M age = 10 years 4 months, SD = 7.9 months. Most importantly, longitudinal findings showed that children who scored relatively high on ToM at T1 reported relatively lower perceptions of self-worth and higher number of mental states verbs in their perceptions of peer and family conversations at T2. Significant negative longitudinal associations were found between children's number of siblings and their perceptions of self-worth (T1) and number of cognitive terms in their perceptions of peer and family conversations (T2). Frequency analysis suggested that girls’ perceptions of conversations referred to more social and psychological aspects of self and relationships, whereas boys focused mainly on physical activities. Most children were more likely to prefer listening to talking during social conversations. The majority of children reported feelings of mixed or ambiguous emotions during experiences of silence. Implications for socioemotional and cognitive development in early adolescents are discussed.     

Trust Development: Testing a New Model in Undergraduate Roommate Relationships

Interpersonal trust is a vital component of social relationships. In this study the roles of parental attachment, perceived similarity of trustee to self, and social exchange processes in trust development were investigated longitudinally with randomly assigned, same-sex undergraduate roommates during emerging adulthood. A total of 214 first-year students completed weekly self-report measures during the first 5 weeks of the fall semester. Perceived similarity measured the second week and social exchange with roommates across the 5 weeks predicted participants’ trust in their roommate, with social exchange mediating the relation between perceived similarity and trust. Results highlight interrelations of social exchange and trust in established relationships.     

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.     

Fathers and Perceptions of God Play an Important Role in Psychological Adjustment Among Emerging Adults in Guatemala and the United States

Interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory posits that people require parental acceptance in childhood to develop healthy psychological adjustment. People’s beliefs about and their relationship with deity also influences their psychological adjustment. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how both perceived parental acceptance and a relationship with deity are related to psychological adjustment for emerging adults in Guatemala and the United States. Participants (N?=?189) from Guatemala and the United States completed measures of perceived parental acceptance-rejection, images of God, attachment to God, and psychological adjustment. Results indicate that perceived paternal acceptance-rejection was only a significant predictor of psychological adjustment in U.S. participants, and not in Guatemalan participants. In both samples, images of God did not predict psychological adjustment. However, an anxious attachment with God predicted psychological maladjustment for both groups. The findings suggest that two important factors to be considered by researchers, educators, and mental health professionals are adults’ perceptions of their father’s level of acceptance-rejection and the amount of anxiety they experience in their relationship with God.     

The Relation of Distressful Childhood Experiences and Empathy in College Undergraduates

We assessed the relation between the empathic responsiveness of young adults and the relative frequency and intensity of distressful events they experienced as children. Undergraduate subjects (N = 111; 56 men and 55 women) were led to believe that they were participating in two separate studies. In the first study, students completed the Distress Experiences in Childhood questionnaire, a filler task, and a slightly abbreviated version of the Mehrabian and Epstein (1972) empathy measure. In the second study, students watched an emotion-laden videotape of a patient (actually an actress) in a therapy session and subsequently completed an emotional-response questionnaire adapted from Batson, O'Quin, Fultz, Vanderplas, and Isen (1983). Students who rated their distressful childhood experiences as highly distressing scored higher on both measures of empathy than did students who rated their experiences as relatively less distressing. In contrast, the number of distressful childhood experiences reported was generally unrelated to empathy scores.     

Maternal Depressed Mood and Perceptions of Child Temperament

Research has suggested that women who experience postpartum depression are subsequently more likely to perceive their preschool-aged children as temperamentally difficult and maladjusted. However, previous studies have not controlled for the effects of concurrent depression levels on maternal ratings of child temperament or evaluated the accuracy of maternal reports. In the present study we assessed maternal and paternal ratings of child temperament 2 years after subjects had participated in a study of postpartum depression. The findings indicate that correlations between postpartum depression and subsequent child temperament ratings were accounted for statistically by concurrent levels of depression. Although fathers' ratings corroborated some aspects of maternal perceptions, levels of parental agreement were only moderately high. Moreover, discrepancies between the parents' reports were significantly associated with maternal depression, indicating that parental disagreement is more likely when the wife is dysphoric.     

Patterns of Daily Time Use of Young Adults With or Without First-Episode Psychosis

This study compared patterns of daily activities and satisfaction with time use of young adults with first-episode psychosis and healthy volunteers. Fifty young adults participated in retrospective structured interviews on time use. Young adults with first-episode psychosis spend more time in sleep, passive leisure, and personal care activities, and less in total productive activities and education. No difference appeared for leisure, paid work, and household work, or satisfaction with daily time use. Reasons underlying dissatisfaction with daily time use differed between the groups. Clinical and research implications are discussed.     

Utilization of Individual versus Family Therapy Among Adolescents with Severe Emotional Disturbance

Service utilization patterns among children with severe emotional and/or behavioral disturbances are described for 89 children and families, interviewed at two time points across a 6-month period. Children received a greater number of individual therapy sessions than family therapy sessions, and children significantly decreased their levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Family therapy was associated with decreases in internalizing behaviors when children reported outcomes. Individual therapy was not associated with changes in either internalizing or externalizing behaviors regardless of reporter. Symptom severity did not dictate whether children were provided individual or family therapy. Recommendations for individualized treatment plans are offered.