Candida C. Peterson

Fight or Flight: Factors Influencing Children's and Adults' Decisions to Avoid or Confront Conflict

Abstract Five videotaped dilemmas were used to assess age differences in perceptions of interpersonal conflict and reasoning about whether to avoid or actively pursue incipient disagreements. Each film depicted a clash between friends that could either be pursued by expressing a contrary opinion or avoided by simulating agreement. Three of the topics of potential dispute related to classroom cognitive or judgmental issues, and two revolved around playground social relationships among peers. The 96 male and female subjects were evenly subdivided into 6-, 9-, and 21-year-old age groups. Avoidance was recommended twice as often as engagement overall. But there were differences due to age and to the topic of the conflict. The classroom-related judgmental conflicts were avoided less often than were those involving social relations with peers. Adults likewise recommended avoidance less often than children and were less likely to misperceive the conflicts as hostile. These results supported and extended previous...

Sociocognitive conflict and spatial perspective-taking in deaf children

This study explored two possible theoretical bases for the persistent empirical finding that deaf children lag behind their hearing peers in the development of Piagetian concrete-operational reasoning (Furth, 1971; Liben, 1978). Observations that deaf persons have high tolerance for ambiguity and are exposed to overprotective, conflict-avoidant childbearing methods led to the hypothesis of a weaker drive toward cognitive equilibration in deaf than in hearing individuals. This hypothesis predicted that deaf subjects would be relatively ineffective when given the opportunity to debate with peers in spatial perspectives-taking tasks, showing little or no subsequent gains in reasoning. The present results failed to support this model. Instead, it was found that when deaf 5- to 13-year-olds worked on spatial perspective-taking problems with peers who had likewise failed to pretest, all dyads disagreed actively and productively together. Furthermore, as compared with a deaf control group whose pretest and posttest scores did not differ significantly, the deaf experimental group made reliably fewer errors of placement and orientation on individual posttests after exposure to collective conflict. These results support the notion that cognitive equilibration via sociocognitive conflict is a universal feature of development in both the hearing and the hearing impaired. Practical strategies for promoting productive peer interactions among deaf pupils in school were also discussed.

Children and cigarettes: The effect of a model who quits

Twenty-six previous studies were reviewed which demonstrated a consistent link between childrens smoking uptake and exposure at home to an actively smoking older family member. The present study included another variable: the family model of smoking cessation. The smoking practices, intentions, and attitudes of 344 children aged 10–14 in Western Australia were anonymously assessed. Those with ex-smokers but no active smokers at home resembled children who had never been exposed to a smoking family model in being less likely to smoke now or intend to in the future, having fewer smoking chums, and believing that cigarettes had more personal and social disadvantages than their peers who shared households with active smokers. This suggested that any pro-smoking modeling while the ex-smoker was active had been counteracted by modeling of quitting. Implications for intervention were discussed.

Heated Argument and Adolescent Development

This study explored some correlates of parent-child conflict in healthy, nonclinical families. The subjects were 100 Australian adolescents, fifty male and fifty female, who were divided into concrete-operational and formal/transitional groups on the basis of their performance on two Piagetian problem-solving tasks. Their habitual modes of dealing with disagreements with their parents were scored on a continuum from conflict evasion through calm and heated discussion to fighting. The extent of opinion divergence between parent and child, and the benefits that adolescents gained from the parent-child relationship were also assessed. Results showed significantly more heated levels of debate by formal than concrete-operational subjects. Opinion divergence was not significantly related to cognitive level but was inversely related to the satisfaction that adolescents derived from involvement with their parents. On the other hand, satisfaction bore no significant relationship to the calmness versus heatedness of a familys habitual conflict-resolution strategies. The implications of these findings for an understanding both of the adolescent transition from concrete to formal operations, and of the functions served by conflict in a healthy family are considered.

Adolescents' Thoughts and Feelings about AIDS in Relation to Cognitive Maturity.

The health threat posed by the disease AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a source of widespread community concern. Unfortunately recent research has raised serious doubt over whether contemporary adolescents are sufficiently well informed about the means of transmission and potentially fatal consequences of AIDS to take the precautions necessary to limit their own and others exposure to this virus. One study found that 30 per cent of San Francisco teenagers believed AIDS was curable and up to 25 per cent thought combs hairbrushes or a handshake could transmit it. Because of the implications for AIDS education we therefore wished to discover whether the adolescents formal operational reasoning would predict better understanding of the facts about AIDS. However since cognitive maturity heightens concern over the future a possible link between mature reasoning and greater fear of contracting AIDS was also explored. To the extent that such fears overpower reason they have been blamed for such problematic reactions as fatalistic avoidance of safe-sex precautions or hostility to AIDS sufferers. (authors)

Australian Students’ Ratings of the Importance of AIDS Relative to Other Community Problems

In the absence of an effective medical cure or preventative vaccine, curtailment of the spread of the potentially fatal Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (or AIDS) within Australia depends upon community initiative and involvement. Awareness of the problem and evaluation of the seriousness of the AIDS threat are themselves crucial preconditions to community preventative intervention. The aim of the present study was therefore to assess perceptions by a group of 87 tertiary students of the seriousness of AIDS relative to other problems in the community. The results showed more than one-third of the students ranked AIDS as more of a threat than any other problem, including unemployment, crime, drugs, and nuclear weapons. There was also a significant sex difference, with women evaluating AIDS as a more serious threat than did men.

Middle Age in Urban Australia and an Israeli Kibbutz

Two contrasting models of middle age depict it either as a period of stable, steady-state functioning or as a time of dramatic crisis, upheaval, and renewal...