Working and Playing Together: Prediction of Preschool Social-Emotional Competence from Mother-Child Interaction

The impact of mother-child interaction on preschoolers' social-emotional competence was evaluated. Twenty-five girls and 23 boys (mean age = 44 mos) and their mothers were videotaped performing four play/teaching tasks. Preschool teachers completed the Baumrind Preschool Behavior Q-Sort and the Behar Problem Behavior Questionnaire. Mother-child interaction aggregates represented task orientation, positive emotion, and allowance of autonomy/reliance on mother. Results indicated that specific maternal interaction aggregates coherently predicted the children's Positive Social Behavior, Assertiveness, and Sadness in the preschool setting. Child aggregates were less effective predictors of teachers' ratings. Several gender differences in the prediction of social-emotional competence were found (e.g., maternal allowance of autonomy predicted girls' sadness, but boys' sadness was predicted by their own negative emotion). These findings' contributions to the parent-child literature are discussed.     

Toddlers' Attachment Security to Child-Care Providers: The Safe and Secure Scale

Attachment relationships of toddlers (N = 45) to their child-care providers were investigated. Children's behaviors with their mothers were observed at home at 24 months and with their child-care providers at 26 months. Attachment Q-Sort procedures were used at home (90 items) and in child care (78 items); the latter yielded a 15-item Safe and Secure Scale describing the safe haven and secure base functions of attachment relationships in child care—being able to (a) seek and receive positive attention, (b) feel safe and protected, (c) receive support for exploration, (d) receive consolation when distressed, and (e) seek and accept assistance. Independent observational measures of child-care quality also were obtained at 24 months. As hypothesized, the Safe and Secure Scale was related to proximal rather than distal indicators of child-care quality, and it was a stronger measure than the child-caregiver Q-security score that was based on all 78 items. Child-mother and child-caregiver security were significantly related.     

Emotion Regulation Strategies and Parenting Practices among Parents of Children With Clinic-Referred Conduct Problems

Objective. This study examined the cognitive-affective strategies used by parents of young children with conduct problems to regulate emotions. Key questions concerned the extent to which these emotion regulation strategies are associated with positive and negative parenting practices and predict quality of parenting through interplay with parental depression. Design. Participants were families of toddlers (n = 84) referred to a tertiary-level health service for the treatment of disruptive behavior problems. Parenting practices were indexed through observational coding of parent–child interactions and self-report data on multiple dimensions of positive and negative parenting. Parents self-reported their use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression—the two emotion regulation strategies that are most robustly associated with psychosocial functioning in adults. Results. Associations between emotion regulation strategy and quality of parenting were moderated by parental depressive symptom severity, with distinct effects seen for positive and negative parenting practices. In terms of positive parenting, more frequent use of cognitive reappraisal was associated with increased use of labeled praise among parents with lower levels of depressive symptoms, whereas parents who had higher levels of depressive symptoms engaged in less such praise regardless of how frequently they used reappraisal. In terms of negative parenting, frequent use of cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression were associated with reduced levels of negative parenting, but only among parents with high levels of depression. Conclusions. These findings add to growing support for the integration of emotion regulation strategies into family process models of early-onset conduct problems and related clinical interventions.     

Child abuse potential inventory and parenting behavior: Relationships with high-risk correlates

The primary purpose of this research was to examine the construct validity of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory by comparing maltreating and high-risk parents' CAP Inventory abuse scores to their behavior during interactions with their children. A second purpose was to determine the degree to which CAP Inventory scores and parenting behavior were related to several known correlates of abuse, as measured by parent and teacher reports. Participants (n = 41) included abusive and high-risk parents and their children referred to a treatment group. Correlational analyses revealed that CAP Inventory scores and observed parenting style yielded highly related findings, supporting construct validity of the CAP Inventory. However, the CAP Inventory and observed behavior index showed a different pattern of relationships to the risk correlates. Implications for assessment of risk status are discussed and recommendations are provided for continued research.     

Focus-on-form instructional methods promote deaf college students' improvement in English grammar

Focus-on-form English teaching methods are designed to facilitate second-language learners' noticing of target language input, where "noticing" is an acquisitional prerequisite for the comprehension, processing, and eventual integration of new grammatical knowledge. While primarily designed for teaching hearing second-language learners, many focus-on-form methods lend themselves to visual presentation. This article reports the results of classroom research on the visually based implementation of focus-on-form methods with deaf college students learning English. Two of 3 groups of deaf students received focus-on-form instruction during a 10-week remedial grammar course; a third control group received grammatical instruction that did not involve focus-on-form methods. The 2 experimental groups exhibited significantly greater improvement in English grammatical knowledge relative to the control group. These results validate the efficacy of visually based focus-on-form English instruction for deaf students of English and set the stage for the continual search for innovative and effective English teaching methodologies.     

Commentary: the coalition for improving maternity services:

A consumer advocate, two childbirth educators, and a certified nurse-midwife each provide commentary on the effectiveness of and potential uses for the Evidence Basis for the Ten Steps of Mother-Friendly Care.     

A summer program designed to educate college students for careers in bioinformatics

A summer program was created for undergraduates and graduate students that teaches bioinformatics concepts, offers skills in professional development, and provides research opportunities in academic and industrial institutions. We estimate that 34 of 38 graduates (89%) are in a career trajectory that will use bioinformatics. Evidence from open-ended research mentor and student survey responses, student exit interview responses, and research mentor exit interview/survey responses identified skills and knowledge from the fields of computer science, biology, and mathematics that are critical for students considering bioinformatics research. Programming knowledge and general computer skills were essential to success on bioinformatics research projects. General mathematics skills obtained through current undergraduate natural sciences programs were adequate for the research projects, although knowledge of probability and statistics should be strengthened. Biology knowledge obtained through the didactic phase of the program and prior undergraduate education was adequate, but advanced or specific knowledge could help students progress on research projects. The curriculum and assessment instruments developed for this program are available for adoption by other bioinformatics programs at http://www.calstatela.edu/SoCalBSI.     

Improbable or impossible? How children reason about the possibility of extraordinary events

The present study investigated the development of possibility-judgment strategies between the ages of 4 and 8. In Experiment 1, 48 children and 16 adults were asked whether a variety of extraordinary events could or could not occur in real life. Although children of all ages denied the possibility of events that adults also judged impossible, children frequently denied the possibility of events that adults judged improbable but not impossible. Three additional experiments varied the manner in which possibility judgments were elicited and confirmed the robustness of preschoolers' tendency to judge improbable events impossible. Overall, it is argued that children initially mistake their inability to imagine circumstances that would allow an event to occur for evidence that no such circumstances exist.     

Toward a resolution of inconsistencies in the phonological deficit theory of reading disorders: phonological reading difficulties are more severe in high-IQ poor readers

This study examined whether high- and low-IQ poor readers differed in patterns of reading performance. Ten-year-old poor readers with IQ scores of 110 and higher showed difficulty in taking a phonological approach to reading, failing to show an advantage in reading high-frequency regular versus irregular words and showing impaired nonword reading accuracy for their reading age. However, poor readers with IQ scores of 90 and below showed a more phonological approach to reading, with better reading of regular than irregular words of both high and low frequency, and with nonword reading skills slower than, but as accurate as, those of reading-age controls. We concluded that the high-IQ poor readers experienced difficulty in taking a phonological approach to reading, whereas the low-IQ poor readers had much less marked phonological problems, supporting Stanovich's phonological-core variable-difference model.