Research has demonstrated that emotions expressed in parent-child relationships are associated with children's school success. Yet the types of emotional expressions, and the mechanisms by which emotional expressions are linked with children's success in school, are unclear. In the present article, we focused on negative emotion reciprocity in parent-child interactions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of the study was to examine associations between mothers' socialization practices in childhood and adolescence and offsprings' (N = 32, 16 female) sympathy/concern in early adulthood. Mothers reported on their socialization practices and beliefs a total of 6 times using a Q-sort during their offsprings' childhood (between 7-8 and 11-12 years of age) and adolescence (between 13-14 and 17-18 years of age). Adult offsprings' sympathy/caring was assessed 3 times in early adulthood (at ages 19-20 to 23-24 years) and in their mid-20s to 30s (ages 25-26 to 31-32 years).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough conflict is a normative part of parent-adolescent relationships, conflicts that are long or highly negative are likely to be detrimental to these relationships and to youths' development. In the present article, sequential analyses of data from 138 parent-adolescent dyads (adolescents' mean age was 13.44, SD = 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examined stability and change in prosocial moral reasoning (PRM) assessed longitudinally at ages 20/21, 22/23, 24/25, 26/27, and 31/32 years (N = 32; 16 female) using a pencil-and-paper measure of moral reasoning and examined relations of PRM and prosocial behavior with one another and with empathy, sympathy measured with self- and friend reports in adulthood, self- and mother reports of prosocial tendencies in adolescence, and observed prosocial behavior in preschool. Proportions of different types of PRM (hedonistic, approval, stereotypic, internalized) exhibited high mean-level stability across early adulthood, although stereotypic PMR increased with age and hedonistic PRM (a less sophisticated type of PRM) declined over time for males. More sophisticated PMR was positively related to friends' reports of a prosocial orientation concurrently and at age 24/25, as well as self-reports of sympathy in adolescence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStability and change in mother-adolescent conflict reactions (CRs) and the prediction of CRs from adolescents' earlier behavior problems (and vice versa) were examined with 131 mothers and their adolescents (63 boys). Dyads engaged in a 6-minute conflict discussion twice, 2 years apart ( age was 13 at Time 1 (T1). Nonverbal expressive and verbal CRs during the conflict discussion were coded.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe relations among effortful control, ego resiliency, socialization, and social functioning were examined with a sample of 182 French adolescents (14-20 years old). Adolescents, their parents, and/or teachers completed questionnaires on these constructs. Effortful control and ego resiliency were correlated with adolescents' social functioning, especially with low externalizing and internalizing behaviors and sometimes with high peer competence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFData were collected when children were 42, 54, and 72 months of age (Ns=210, 191, and 172 for T1, T2, and T3, respectively). Children's emotion understanding (EU) and theory of mind (ToM) were examined as predictors of children's prosocial orientation within and across time. EU positively related to children's sympathy across 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn a sample of 18-, 30-, and 42-month-olds, the relations among parenting, effortful control (EC), and maladjustment were examined. Parenting was assessed with mothers' reports and observations; EC was measured with mothers' and caregivers' reports, as well as a behavioral task; and externalizing and internalizing symptoms were assessed with parents' and caregivers' reports. Although 18-month unsupportive (vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examined the relations of 84 preschoolers' (43 boys; mean age=54 months) situational stress reactivity to their observed emotions and mothers' reports of temperament and adjustment. Salivary cortisol and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) were collected prior to, and following, a frustrating task. Children's anger, sadness, and positive affect were measured, and mothers reported on preschoolers' dispositional emotionality, regulation, impulsivity, and problem behaviors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe goals of the present study were to examine (1) the mean-level stability and differential stability of children's positive emotional intensity, negative emotional intensity, expressivity, and social competence from early elementary school-aged to early adolescence, and (2) the associations between the trajectories of children's emotionality and social functioning. Using four waves of longitudinal data (with assessments 2 years apart), parents and teachers of children (199 kindergarten through third grade children at the first assessment) rated children's emotion-related responding and social competence. For all constructs, there was evidence of mean-level decline with age and stability in individual differences in rank ordering.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe relations of children's (n = 214 at Time 1; M age = 6 years at Time 1) dispositional sympathy to adult-reported and behavioral measures of effortful control (EC) and impulsivity were examined in a longitudinal study including five assessments, each two years apart. Especially for boys, relatively high levels of EC and growth in EC were related to high sympathy. Teacher-reported impulsivity was generally modestly negatively related to measures of teacher-reported sympathy for boys, and a decline in impulsivity was linked to boys' sympathy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdolescence is often thought of as a period during which the quality of parent-child interactions can be relatively stressed and conflictual. There are individual differences in this regard, however, with only a modest percent of youths experiencing extremely conflictual relationships with their parents. Nonetheless, there is relatively little empirical research on factors in childhood or adolescence that predict individual differences in the quality of parent-adolescent interactions when dealing with potentially conflictual issues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe authors examined the relations of maternal supportive parenting to effortful control and internalizing problems (i.e., separation distress, inhibition to novelty), externalizing problems, and social competence when toddlers were 18 months old (n = 256) and a year later (n = 230).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe developmental trajectories of attention focusing (by parents' and teachers' reports) and attentional and behavioral persistence (observed during a laboratory task)--2 indexes of effortful control--and externalizing problems from ages 5 to 10 years were examined for 356 children combined from a pair of 3-wave (2 years apart) longitudinal studies. The authors identified clusters of children with distinct trajectories for these variables and examined the links between the effortful control trajectories and the externalizing problem trajectories. Although attention focusing remained relatively stable, attentional and behavioral persistence continued to show mean-level changes (especially among the children with lower levels of persistence).
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