Developmental psychology in the real world: A paradigm of parent education

Twenty years ago, William Kessen, Greta Fein and I developed and tested a model of parent education, a model which involved variation in curricular content, didactic approaches, and child outcomes–experimentally contrasted. Our experience yielded some valuable lessons about the extent to which researchers can influence parents' behaviour, and parents their children's development. In the present article I suggest that these lessons might be useful for researchers now as they were for us then. I present some observations about the research that developmental psychologists have done in the intervening two decades and suggest that we could learn much by using such a model of parent education to answer questions about the effets of parents' behaviour on children's development. Carefully done, parent education studies can yield valuable information about many of the questions raised in recent correlational research. Parent training research can suggest hypotheses that can be tested with data collected non-interventively and analysed in causal model analyses–and vice versa. What is more, because one reason for studying parent effects is so that we can offer guidance to parents about rearing their children, this design has a particular advantage; it is both the medium and the message.     

Mentally retarded persons as parents: Prevalence and the situation of their children

This paper describes a research program on mentally retarded parents and their children. For this nation-wide study, two structured questionnaires were sent to all municipalities in Norway. Both questionnaires were sent to public health nurses and were followed-up by a structured telephone interview based on the questionnaires. The primary aim of the study was to survey the number of children born to mentally retarded parents. In addition, the children's needs and functional abilities were to be assessed. Twenty-three mentally retarded persons had given birth in the course of the past twelve months. A total of 126 children with mentally retarded parents were identified, with an incidence of 27 children per year, and a prevalence of approximately 430 children under 16 years of age in a population of 4 mill. People with a mean of 1.05 child per family. About 43% of the children of mentally retarded parents appeared to have learning difficulties. Forty percent of the children suffered from failures of care. Between 25% and 68% of the children with learning problems had poorly developed motor or language abilities, sense modalities or psycho-social status.     

Informal Caregiving to Persons with AIDS in the United States: Caregiver Burden Among Central Cities Residents Eighteen to Forty-Nine Years Old

Characteristics and caregiving experiences of friends and family members caring for people with AIDS (PWAs) were examined. Based on a probability sample of informal AIDS caregivers ages 18–49 living in central cities of the United States (n = 260), analyses were conducted to (a) identify the sociodemographic characteristics of young central city caregivers; and (b) examine the effects of caregiver characteristics (relationship to PWA, gender, race/ethnicity, income, sexual orientation, HIV status, perceived susceptibility), and level of objective caregiving demands, on subjective caregiver burden. Results indicate that the largest group of caregivers in this age category are male friends of the PWA—a group not typically found among caregivers to persons with other types of illnesses. In general, gay or bisexual caregivers, caregivers who have traditional family ties to the PWA, men relative to women, and lower income caregivers, report the greatest burden. While level of caregiving demands represents the most influential predictor of caregiver burden, white and male caregivers experience greater burden, independent of level of involvement and other caregiver characteristics. Receiving instrumental support with caregiving buffers the impact of high objective demands on subjective burden.     

The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment: A comment on Zimmerman's critique

This paper is a reply to an article in this journal by M. Zimmerman titled “The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment: A Comment on Elardo and Bradley's Review”. We found Zimmerman's critique of our original review article (Developmental Review, 1981, 1, 113–145) to contain points which were well taken, and several which seemed pedantic. Specifically, we address his concerns about our discussion of the HOME scale's interrater reliability, test-retest stability, concurrent validity, and predictive validity; and we reply to his comments about the uses of the HOME scale for purposes of screening and matching environments.     

Infants’ behavioral styles in joint attention situations and parents’ socio-economic status

In this study the eco-cultural model of parenting (Keller, H. (2007). Cultures of infancy. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum) was applied to the study of joint attention behavior of children from families with different socio-economic status (SES). It was hypothesized that infants’ early communication styles would differ with SES reflecting more independent or interdependent interactions with their caregivers. It was also hypothesized that infants would use the same types of behaviors whether they have declarative or imperative communication goals. The Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS, Mundy et al., 2003) was administered to 103 typically developing infants of 12 months (approximately half of them siblings of children with autism). A factor analysis, yielding four behavioral factors, namely pointing, eye contact, actions and following points, confirmed the hypothesis that infants use behaviors consistently across situations independent of their communicative intent. MANOVAs (comprising parental education and income) revealed that higher SES infants showed actions more frequently in the ESCS whereas lower SES infants followed experimenter's points more frequently. The results are discussed in the context of presumably differing socialization goals for infants and the divergent contribution of parental education and income that seem to have additive contribution to some factors (actions, following points) but divergent contributions to others (pointing, eye contact).     

Adverse caregiving in early life: The trauma and deprivation distinction in young children

Knowledge and understanding about the impact of cumulative adverse experiences on the health and wellbeing of children, adolescents, and adults has rapidly expanded over the past 30 years. Despite the invaluable attention and support this proliferation has drawn to the importance of early childhood experiences, we believe that it is time to move beyond broad indices of risk and toward more specific and individualized understanding of how risk exposures are linked to clinical outcomes in young children. Within infant and early childhood mental health, there is a need for greater specificity in linking adverse caregiving experiences in early life to psychopathology in children. We highlight a framework distinguishing experiences of trauma from experiences of deprivation and use the examples of posttraumatic stress disorder and reactive attachment disorder to demonstrate how greater specificity in our understanding of early adverse caregiving can lead to more accurate and targeted diagnosis and treatment for young children. Both researchers and clinicians benefit from an approach to gain a greater appreciation of the links between specific types of experiences and outcomes in the children that we serve.     

Exploring the complex emotional relationships that influence children's participation rights in early childhood education settings

Early childhood educators engage in complex and emotional work in their professional role educating and caring for children aged from birth to five years. The aim of this paper is to promote autoethnography as a most suitable method of understanding the role emotions play in the actualisation of young children's participation rights in early childhood education services. The author is a practising educator and draws upon a specific auto-ethnographic account of practice, the story of Sarah, as the focus of this paper to explore the emotional intensity of relationships in early childhood education. Autoethnography is discussed as a method to sit alongside ‘traditional’ ethnographic research to provide a deep understanding of the role of the educator embracing and enacting a rights approach in their work and what influences their decision making. In conclusion the author suggests autoethnography is a useful reflexive tool for educators to consider the role of emotions as a catalyst for change to ensure the actualisation of children's participation rights in daily practice in early childhood education.     

Stability of developmental status and risk of impairment at 24 and 36 months in late preterm infants

BackgroundFew studies investigated whether late preterm infants might have developmental delays in several domains in early life and how stable the lag in developmental status might be.AimWe aimed to examine the stability of potential delays across developmental domains at 24 and 36 months of age in late preterm (34°-36⁶ weeks) and term (≥37 weeks) children and whether the risk of delays remained high at 36 months.Study design, subjects, and outcome measureWe conducted a prospective cohort analysis of the children of pregnant women participating in the Vitamin Antenatal Asthma Reduction Trial (VDAART). 652 children who were prospectively followed up and had parent-completed Ages Stages Questionnaires (ASQ-3) questionnaires at both 24 and 36 months were analyzed to assess their domain-specific developmental status.Results6.61 % (42/635) of children had a late preterm birth. Developmental delays were stable between 24 and 36 months on all 5 domains for the children born preterm and on 4/5 domains for those born at term. The developmental domains with the status stability at 24 and 36 months in both late preterm and term children were the gross motor, communication, personal-social skills, and problem-solving. Late preterm children compared with term children remained at higher risk of delays at 36 months for gross motor, communication, and problem-solving skills (aOR = 4.54, 95 %CI: 1.81−10.79; aOR = 8.60, 95 %CI: 3.10−23.28 and aOR = 3.80, 95 %CI: 1.58−8.73, respectively).ConclusionLate preterm birth is associated with suboptimal development and stability in several domains at both 24 and 36 months and compared with term birth, requiring early monitoring and assessment of the developmental lag to avoid potential long-term implications.     

Antenatal caregiving representations and perinatal behavior in mothers with severe lifetime psychopathology

Psychopathology poses a risk for optimal parenting. The current study explored antenatal caregiving representations as markers for later risk of nonoptimal maternal behavior among mothers with severe mental illness. Sixty-five mothers diagnosed with psychosis, bipolar disorder, depression (psychopathology group), and nonclinical controls participated in a longitudinal study from pregnancy to 16 weeks after birth. Mental health diagnoses and caregiving representations were assessed during pregnancy. Maternal behavior was assessed during the 5-min recovery phase of the still-face paradigm at 16 weeks. Mothers with psychopathology reported significantly higher levels of “heightened” caregiving representations (i.e., separation anxiety from the child) than did controls. The only significant diagnostic group difference in perinatal maternal behavior was that mothers diagnosed with depression exhibited more overriding-intrusive behavior than did nonclinical control mothers. Regression modeling results showed that antenatal caregiving representations of “role reversal” predicted significantly lower levels of sensitivity and higher levels of overriding-intrusive behavior independent of the effect of psychopathology. The findings can be interpreted in the context of representational transformation to motherhood during pregnancy. The results provide preliminary evidence for the potential of a new questionnaire measure of caregiving representations as a screening instrument for antenatal representational risk.