A family-centered approach to the support of families with a young child with an intellectual or developmental disability has been widely adopted in the last decade. While some of the foundational assumptions of family-centered theory have been tested, there remain considerable gaps in the research evidence for this approach. While parenting stress and competence have been examined in the general family support literature, these variables have received little attention in the family-centered support literature. This pilot study examined the relationship between parent stress and parenting competence and family-centered support. The results suggest that important components of family-centered practice are significantly associated with parent stress, but that a meaningful association between parenting competence and family-centered practice is yet to be demonstrated.
Theory of mind (ToM), the understanding of people's beliefs and states of mind underpins effective communication and social relationships throughout life. Plausibly, the experience of being maltreated could delay the child's development of ToM. However empirical evidence for this is scanty, especially in children age five and over. The present study aimed to fill this void. 105 Australian children were tested on first-and second-order false belief tests and a developmentallysequenced ToM Scale. Of this sample, 52 children had experienced maltreatment and were receiving therapy and 53 children were matched nonclinic controls. As predicted, controls outperformed the maltreated on first-order changed-locations, misleading container false belief tests, and on an advanced belief-emotion test. Furthermore, maltreatment severity was an independent negative predictor of ToM understanding after controlling other variables. Findings reveal the persistence of problems in understanding others' minds for maltreated children with implications both for social cognition and for applied interventions.
We examined the growth of a theory of mind (ToM) in Indigenous Australian children who spoke Aboriginal English as their first language. We also pioneered the suitability of a five-step developmental scale of ToM understanding for 2-year-old toddlers from Indigenous-and Anglo-Australian cultural backgrounds. A total of 97 children aged 2 to 5 years took (a) a battery of false belief (FB) tests, (b) a developmental ToM Scale, and (c) a standard language ability test. Results showed that, contrary to earlier findings for Piagetian tasks, the Indigenous Australian children were not delayed in ToM understanding. Instead, at age 2, Indigenous toddlers significantly outperformed their Anglo peers and throughout the preschool years they scored just as highly on FB and all ToM Scale steps as Anglo-Australians their age, notwithstanding their statistically significant delays behind Anglo-Australians in standard English language skill (the language of testing). We also found, for the first time, that the five-step ToM Scale was both suitable for, and sensitive to individual differences in, children as young as age 2. These findings add to a growing body of research highlighting the importance of early family and cultural experiences for the growth of social cognition.
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