This study examined the extent to which infant and parent response trajectories during the Still-Face-Paradigm (SFP) in early infancy predicted later infant-mother and infant-father attachment. Families (n = 135) participated in the SFP when infants were 3, 5, and 7 months and the Strange Situation when infants were 12 (mothers) and 14 months (fathers). Multilevel models showed that parent sensitivity assessed during the SFP was related to infants’ affective and behavioral response trajectories during the SFP, and that sensitivity and infant response trajectories predicted attachment. Results from the present study support the notion that parent and infant responses in the SFP with mothers and fathers during Bowlby’s Attachment in the Making phase provide insight into the developing parent-child attachment relationship.
Using data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Study, this study analysed the stability of child aggressive behaviour beginning in infancy and tested whether spanking when the child was 36 months was associated with aggressive child behaviour among three ethnic groups and whether maternal warmth moderated the effect of spanking on aggressive behaviour in each ethnic group at 36 months, after controlling for earlier aggressive behaviour. Participants included 693 Hispanic parent-child dyads, 1013 African-American dyads and 1086 Caucasian dyads who met qualifications for participation in the Early Head Start programme. Findings suggest that infant temperament was associated with aggressive behaviour at 24 and 36 months and that child aggression remained stable. Among the three ethnic groups, spanking was only associated with aggressive behaviour for children who had Caucasian mothers and maternal warmth did not moderate the effect of spanking on aggressive behaviour. Copyright r 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Key words: spanking; parenting; early childhood; discipline; aggressive behaviour; Early Head Start A large body of research and a variety of early intervention programmes are devoted to understanding and treating early aggression. Aggression and
Symptoms of depression include feelings of sadness, loneliness, suicidal ideation, and self-dislike. Adolescent depression is viewed as a problem in Japan, but there is little research on the correlates of depression in Japanese youth. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of depression in Japanese youth and to examine correlates of depression using a risk and promotive factor framework. This study examined the symptoms of depression among 802 Japanese youth attending postsecondary schools in the Sapporo area. Separate analyses were conducted for males and females to determine whether the importance of risk and promotive factors varied by gender. The results showed that many factors that had been linked to depressive symptoms in Western samples were predictive of depressive symptoms in Japanese youth. The risk and promotive factors accounted for 50% and 59% of the variance in depressive symptoms for the female and male subsamples, respectively.
The relationships among social skills, dysregulation of symbolic representations of attachment, and school readiness were examined. Participants were 74 preschool children from low-income families in Midwest America. Attachment representations and dysregulation of symbolic representations of attachment were assessed using a story completion task (George & Solomon, 2000) and teachers completed a survey of child behavior, which was used to assess social skills and school readiness skills. Dysregulated content in children's narratives and social skills were significant negative correlates of school readiness. There was also a marginally significant negative association between defensive dysregulation and school readiness skills for children classified as disorganized. Furthermore, a specific marker of dysregulation, controlling behavior toward the administrator, was negatively associated with school readiness, but only for children classified as disorganized. Results from this study suggest that a breakdown in the strategies of insecure/organized children may be a risk factor for low levels of school readiness and that different forms of disorganization may be associated with different types of risk. It may be useful for future studies to account for different forms of disorganization and evidence of a breakdown of strategy.
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