Parental predictions of their children's knowledge about dangerous situations

This study explored the extent to which parents can predict their 5-, 8-, and 12-year-old male and female children's responses to questions about safe and dangerous situations. A total of 68 children and 61 parents of these children were questioned about their children's knowledge of (1) home address/telephone number, (2) strangers, (3) what to do in various emergency situations, (4) trust in police, (5) compliance towards police, and (6) resistance towards strangers. Parents were most accurate in predicting their children's understanding of strangers and trust in police officers. Parents overestimated their 5-year-olds' knowledge of home address/telephone and appropriate behaviors when lost or in abduction situations. Parental overestimations of knowledge and the likelihood to behave safely were more frequent with boys than with girls. Parental underestimations of children's knowledge of certain types of avoidance actions also were found. The results were interpreted in terms of metacognition and sex differences in spatial freedom.     

Longitudinal study of young children's responses to challenging achievement situations

Three studies were conducted to replicate and extend Dweck's findings regarding young children's responses to challenging achievement situations. Dweck's dichotomous helplessness classification system (i.e., task choice, task choice reason) was replicated with kindergartners, n = 235 (50% male), and first graders, n = 70 (46% male). To test whether individual differences in young children's responses to challenging situations are stable over time, 1- and 5-year follow-ups of the kindergartners were conducted. On the basis of children's responses on age-appropriate behavioral tasks, a composite of cognitive, behavioral, and affective helplessness indices predicted helplessness at 1 and 5 years later, n = 114 (50% male), above and beyond kindergarten task ability and gender, p<.05. Kindergarten helplessness predicted teacher ratings of children's helplessness 5 years later as well, p<.05. The implications of these findings for early intervention are discussed.     

The role of temperament in children's affective and behavioral responses in achievement situations

Although students' affects and behaviors in achievement situations have been shown to be influenced by their previous learning experiences, less is known about how they relate to students' dispositional characteristics, such as temperament. This study examined to what extent children's temperament is related to their affective and behavioral responses in achievement situations. Teachers rated first-graders' (n = 153) temperamental characteristics in the Fall semester. Children's active task avoidance, anxiety, and helplessness were rated in test situations in the Fall and Spring semesters. The results showed that the more easily distracted the children were, the more task avoidance they showed, and the more their task avoidance increased during the first grade. Moreover, children's high level of inhibition was related to high levels of anxiety and helplessness. The findings suggest that characteristics that are related to students' behavioral regulation and inhibition are particularly important for their affective and behavioral responses in achievement situations.     

Parental involvement,children's aspirations,and achievement in new immigrant families

The authors investigated the relationships among multiple aspects of parental involvement (English proficiency, school involvement, control and monitoring of children), children's aspirations, and achievement in new immigrant families in the United States. They used data on immigrant parents and school-age children (N = 1,255) from the New Immigrant Survey to examine immigrant families from diverse backgrounds. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that parental English proficiency and involvement in school education are related to children's academic achievement, cognitive development, and English language ability, directly as well as indirectly, through children's educational aspirations. Parental control and monitoring is not beneficial to immigrant children's cognitive development, although variations were found across different groups. They also observed intriguing findings regarding gender and racial or ethnic diversity. Based on their findings, they provide recommendations for the fostering of academic success and the design and implementation of educational programs and practices for immigrant children.     

Parental influences on primary school children's mathematics achievement: insights from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children

Results from international mathematics tests are focussing the attention of national leaders on the learning of mathematics in the primary years. With this attention, comes the need to explore the factors that contribute to and impede this learning. Though much of this focus is on classroom practices, it is timely to examine the important influence that parents have on their children's achievement. This paper reports on a secondary analysis of data from a large longitudinal study in Australia; in particular, the effectiveness of Australian parents’ involvement in their children's homework. The results suggest that the actual help with homework has, on average, a negative effect on children's achievement even after controlling for earlier achievement. Significantly, however, the other types of involvement, such as provision of a good home environment, have positive effects on achievement. The implications of these findings are also discussed.     

Parental beliefs and their role in child-rearing

Beliefs have been a topic of considerable interest among researchers in various fields. In this article 71 articles reporting a study on parental beliefs and published in the course of fifteen years (1980–1995) are reviewed. After clarifying the term ‘belief’, the topics and the methodological solutions of the studies are discussed. Throughout the discussion the question of the origins of parental beliefs and the belief — behaviour dilemma are dealt with. Finally, the implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are presented.     

The normative and structural properties of the children's Nowicki-Strickland scale of internal-external control: Children with adjustment problems

One hundred thirty-five children with adjustment problems, referred to a semiresidential educational setting, were evaluated utilizing the Children's Nowicki-Strickland Scale of Internal-External Control (N-S Scale). Pretest scores were factor analyzed, revealing two correlated factors (20 items): (a) general feelings of helplessness in interpersonal relationships, and (b) general feelings of lack of control over events or problems. The 20-item reduced scale was found to be more reliable, especially at the younger ages, and reliability data are provided for each scale. Results are discussed relative to previous research findings and suggestions for further research are offered.     

Domain-specific antecedents of parental psychological control and monitoring: the role of parenting beliefs and practices

This research examined the effects of domain-differentiated beliefs about legitimate parental authority and ratings of restrictive parental control on adolescent- and mother-reported psychological and behavioral control. The influence of parenting beliefs and practices regarding socially regulated (moral and conventional) and ambiguously personal (multifaceted and personal) issues was examined in 93 middle-class African American early adolescents (M = 13.11 years, SD = 1.29) and their mothers, who were followed longitudinally for 2 years. Domain-specific parenting beliefs and ratings predicted adolescent-reported maternal psychological control and parental monitoring, but the nature and direction of the relations differed. Adolescents who rated parents as more restrictive in their control of personal issues and who believed that parents should have less legitimate authority over these issues rated their mothers as higher in psychological control. In contrast, more adolescent-reported parental monitoring was associated with gender (being female) and adolescents' beliefs that parents have more legitimate authority to regulate personal issues. As expected, adolescent age and gender influenced mother-reported monitoring and psychological control; in addition, the effects of mothers' ratings of restrictive control on both psychological control and monitoring were moderated by gender. The results indicate that psychological control and monitoring can be understood in terms of the particular behaviors that are controlled, as well as the style in which control is exercised.     

Understanding children's epistemic beliefs in elementary education

Research shows that the beliefs individuals hold about knowledge and knowing (epistemic beliefs) influence learning approaches and outcomes. However, little is known about the nature of children's epistemic beliefs and how best to measure these. In this pilot study, 11 Australian children (in Grade 4 or Grade 6) were asked to ‘draw, write and tell’ about their epistemic beliefs using drawings, written responses and interviews, respectively. Drawings were analysed, with the majority of children depicting external, one-way sources of knowledge. The written statements and interviews were analysed using inductive thematic analysis, showing that children predominantly described knowledge acquisition as processes of task-based learning. Interviews also enabled children to describe a wider range of views. These results indicate that the methodological combination of ‘draw, write and tell’ allowed for a deeper understanding of the children's epistemic beliefs which holds implications for future research.     

Parental estimates of children's receptive vocabulary

Samples of 13 mothers and fathers of normal preschool children and 11 mothers of high-risk preschool children estimated their children's vocabulary ability by predicting their child's responses to individual PPVT-R items and by making a global rating of their child's vocabulary ability. Prior to the parental estimations, the children had been administered the PPVT-R. Accuracy of parental estimates, as measured by d', was low, although the mothers' average estimates were significantly higher than zero and higher than fathers' estimates. Accuracy of estimation was similar for mothers of normal preschoolers and for mothers of high-risk preschoolers. Time spent reading to the child, mothers' employment, and children's ability level were not related to parental accuracy. Although correlations between the children's scores and parental estimates all were significant, parents tended to overestimate their children's abilities by approximately 9 to 10 points on the average. Overall, parental estimates of their children's vocabulary ability, using a global rating scale, provide a somewhat useful measure for placing their children in a broad classification range.     

Deaf children's understanding of beliefs and desires

Twenty-two children (5-12 year old) who were profoundly, prelingually deaf were given two tests designed to tap their 'theory of mind', that is, their ability to attribute independent mental states to other people. The tests were versions of Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith's Sally-Anne task and of Baron-Cohen's breakfast task. Seventy percent of the children were successful on all questions requiring belief attribution, a considerably and significantly larger percentage than the 29% obtained by Peterson and Siegal for a similar sample, though it is still lower than would be expected on the basis on chronological age. Children were universally successful on questions requiring the attribution of desire. We discuss implications of the findings.     

How home gets to school: Parental control strategies predict children's school readiness

At-risk families’ control style (autonomy support and coercive control) was examined in relation to children's school readiness; children's social skills and mastery motivation were hypothesized mediating variables. In two different, low-income samples from diverse ethnic backgrounds, one preschool sample recruited from Head Start (N = 199) and a school transition sample composed of children entering elementary school (N = 344), parental control styles were related to children's academic readiness modestly but significantly in the preschool sample and weakly in the school transition sample. Children's social skills and mastery motivation skills (persistence and goal orientation) were significantly related to the academic measures of school readiness, and fully mediated the association between parents’ use of coercive behavioral control and academic readiness. Such mediation could not be tested for parental support of children's autonomy. The results indicate that a developmental cascade exists between parental control strategies and academic indices of school readiness, emphasizing the importance of family context models of school readiness. Furthermore, strong correlations between the domains of school readiness were found in both samples, reinforcing calls for a multidimensional approach to supporting school readiness in early childhood education programs.     

Effects of weight on children's educational achievement

In this paper, we investigate the association between weight and children's educational achievement, as measured by scores on Peabody Individual Achievement Tests in math and reading, and grade attainment. Data for the study came from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), which contains a large, national sample of children between the ages of 5 and 12 between 1986 and 2004. We obtained estimates of the association between weight and achievement using several regression model specifications that controlled for a variety of observed characteristics of the child and his or her mother, and time-invariant characteristics of the child. Our results suggest that, in general, children who are overweight or obese have achievement test scores that are about the same as children with average weight.     

Effects on children's achievement and curiosity of variations in learner control over an interactive video lesson

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of variations in learner control on children's level of curiosity and learning from computer-based interactive video (CBIV). The content was presented as a videodisc visit to an art museum and contained both facts and concepts. A posttest-only control group design was employed with 101 first-and second-grade subjects randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions—Program Control, Learner Control, Learner Control with Advisement—or a control group. The dependent variables were achievement and three measures of curiosity. Children in the Learner Control with Advisement group scored significantly higher on the achievement posttest than the Learner Control subjects or control group. No differences were found between the Program Control and either of the Learner Control groups. For the curiosity measures, the Learner Control with Advisement subjects scored significantly higher than the control group on Content Exploration, and the subjects in the control group scored significantly higher than those in the Program Control group on Persistence.     

Deaf children's use of beliefs and desires in negotiation

Although several studies have shown that deaf children demonstrated impaired performances on false-belief tasks, the children's belief understanding appeared intact when asked to explain emotions or behavior. However, this finding does not necessarily indicate a full-fledged theory of mind. This study aimed to investigate deaf children's negotiation strategies in false-belief situations, because situations that require negotiation provide a natural context with a clear motivational aspect, which might appeal more strongly to deaf children's false-belief reasoning capacities. The purpose of this study was to compare the reactions of 11- to 12-year-old deaf and hearing children to scenarios in which a mother, who is unaware of a change in the situation, threatens to block the fulfillment of the child's desire. The results showed that deaf children more often failed to correct the mother's false beliefs. In contrast with hearing children, who frequently left their own desires implicit, deaf children kept stressing their desires as a primary argument, even though the mother could be expected to be fully aware of these desires. Moral claims were used to the same extent by both groups. In general, deaf children more often used arguments that did not provide new information for their conversation partners, including repetitions of the same argument. The results were interpreted in terms of the special needs that are required by the hampered communication between deaf and hearing people as well as in terms of the ongoing discussion regarding theory-of-mind development in deaf children.