Bénédicte Mouton

Do Parenting Variables Have Specific or Widespread Impact on Parenting Covariates? The Effects of Manipulating Self-Efficacy or Verbal Responsiveness

ABSTRACT This research aimed at determining to what extent manipulating a specific parenting variable, self-efficacy beliefs or verbal responsiveness, causes specific change in this variable alone, or conversely to what extent it causes widespread change that affects other parenting covariates—in particular behavioral and emotional responsiveness, positive affect irritability, support, and control. Two microtrials were used to achieve this goal. The 45 parents participating were randomly assigned to an 8-week waiting list followed by an 8-week intervention condition focusing on self-efficacy manipulation, or to an 8-week intervention condition focusing on verbal responsiveness manipulation. It can be concluded from the results that the two specific parenting variables under consideration had widespread effects on the six parenting behaviors, with the exception of control in the self-efficacy beliefs condition. The results are discussed for both empirical and clinical purposes.

Parenting Programs to Reduce Young Children’s Externalizing Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of their Behavioral or Cognitive Orientation

Abstract This meta-analytic review evaluates 35 parenting programs to analyze their effectiveness at reducing young children’s externalizing behavior (EB). It looks at whether behavioral or cognitive orientation, informant or duration of these programs moderate their effect on such young children. It confirms that parenting interventions are effective at decreasing young children’s EB but no moderation effect was found for specific orientation or duration, only for the informant. This illustrates the current difficulty in comparing programs on the basis of their theoretical background, which prevents the understanding of which are the most efficient parenting variables and change processes to manipulate.

?Show Me How Your Wrist Moves, and I Will Tell You How Active You Are!? Towards an Objective Measure of Preschoolers? Motor Activity

Objective: Although a certain level of motor activity is considered to be typical in preschoolers, in the most severe cases it interferes with the child’s social and academic development. Valid assessment procedure of children’s motor activity is therefore a very important issue. The current study aims to validate the Triaxial Accelerometry for Preschoolers (3AAP), a method using the measurement of children’s wrist acceleration as a way to estimate their motor activity. Method: Data were collected from a community sample of 226 preschoolers and from a sample of 32 preschoolers clinically referred for externalizing behavior concerns. The participants’ motor activity was assessed using a triaxial accelerometer (a sensor worn on the wrist) in three different conditions of assessment, i.e. at school, in a lab session and during a computerized task administration. Results: The 3AAP variables, i.e. the peak, the mean level, the intra-individual variability, and the median of motor activity as well as the percentage of time spent in the lower range and conversely in the higher range of motor activity, were highly intercorrelated and normally distributed. They were significantly correlated with externalizing behavior-related scales from the CBCL, the SDQ and the UCG, and low correlations were reported with internalizing behavior-related scales from the same instruments. Test-retest correlations after a 10-week interval were moderate to high. Significant differences were displayed between the three conditions of assessment as well as between referred and normally-developing preschoolers. Conclusion: The 3AAP scores are good candidates for an objective, low-cost and reliable measurement of preschoolers’ motor activity that could be helpful both for research and clinical purposes.

Child Differential Sensitivity to Parental Self-Efficacy Improvement: A Micro-Trial Perspective

This study investigates the hypothesis of a child differential sensitivity to parenting improvement. One hundred and fourteen parents of preschoolers participated in two parenting micro-trials aiming to increase parental self-efficacy in view of improving child behavior. The first micro-trial took place in a short-term laboratory experiment; the other was an eight-week parenting group intervention, both focusing on altering parental cognition. Differential effects of parental self-efficacy improvement on child’s positive and negative behaviors, depending on child temperament, were compared at post-test between control and experimental groups. Both observation and questionnaires were used to measure child behavior as well as regression and Regions of Significance analyses. Child differential sensitivity was found both in the laboratory experiment and in the parenting intervention for the temperamental trait of negative emotionality but not for the temperamental trait of activity. However, this sensitivity was in an unexpected direction. Highly emotional children benefited less from this parental cognitive improvement than children low on emotionality. These results may be explained by the specific cognitive nature of these two parenting micro-trials.