Donna M. Gelfand

Maternal Depression and the Quality of Early Attachment: An Examination of Infants, Preschoolers, and Their Mothers.

Relations between maternal depression and attachment security among 50 infant-mother and 54 preschool child-mother dyads were examined using the classification system of M. D. S. Ainsworth, M. C. Blehar, E. Waters, and S. Wall (1978) and M. Main and J. Solomon (1990) for infants and the Preschool Assessment of Attachment (P. M. Crittenden, 1992b) for preschoolers. Attachment insecurity was significantly associated with maternal depression among infants and preschoolers. Furthermore, children without unitary, coherent attachment strategies tended to have more chronically impaired mothers than did children with coherent, organized attachment strategies. Results stress the importance of severity-chronicity of parental illness in the study of depression and early attachment relations, and that differences between children with and without coherent, organized attachment strategies are as clinically informative as are differences between secure and insecure children.

Mother-toddler interaction patterns associated with maternal depression

Interactive coordination was observed in laboratory play interactions of pairs of 29 clinically depressed and 14 nondepressed mothers and their 13-29-month-old children (M = 18.9 months). Nondepressed mothers and their children displayed more interactive coordination than depressed-mother dyads (p < .001). Depressed mothers were less likely to repair interrupted interactions, and their toddlers were less likely to maintain interactions than nondepressed controls. Toddlers matched their nondepressed but not their depressed mothers negative behavior rates. Results suggested that early interventions focus on training mothers to attend to maintain, and repair mother-child interactions to more closely approximate normal levels of interactive coordination.

The Effects of Instructional Prompts and Praise on Children's Donation Rates

GELFAND, DONNA M.; HARTMANN, DONALD P.; CROMER, CINDY C.; SMITrH, CATHLEEN L.; and PAGE, BRENT C. The Efects of Instructional Prompts and Praise on Childrens Donation Rates. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1975, 46, 980-983. A total of 21 children who displayed low baseline rates of donating pennies to help a needy peer were exposed to instructional prompts to donate and praise for each donation. Some children donated repeatedly following the prompting alone, while others resumed low rates of donation after prompting ceased. Of 10 children who responded temporarily to prompting, 4 increased their helping rates when praised but continued to donate when praise was discontinued. 6 additional children faithfully reflected the praise contingency in their behavior by donating infrequently in the absence of praise and at high rates when praised for donations. Both prompts and praise appear to influence childrens help giving.

Self-control practices associated with weight loss maintenance in children and adolescents*

This study examined six potential correlates of the maintenance of weight reduction in overweight children and adolescents: self weight management, parental weight management, physical exercise, social activity, average meal content, and average snack content. Subjects were 13 children who had lost weight and maintained the weight loss (maintainers), 12 children who had lost weight but regained the weight loss (regainers), and 17 children who had never had a weight problem (normal weight children). A four-day eating and exercise diary completed by the child with one days overlap with parent report and a weight control questionnaire completed independently by the parent and the child provided the data for analysis. Maintainers reported more self-regulation and more physical exercise than either the regainers of the normal weight group. Regainers reported more parental regulation of weight management than did normal weight youngsters. Neither food intake nor social activity differentiated groups.

The Preschool Assessment of Attachment: Construct validity in a sample of depressed and nondepressed families

Construct validity of the newly developed Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA) was examined in a sample of depressed and nondepressed mothers and their preschoolers, focusing on attachment related differences in childrens general caregiving environments, maternal psychosocial functioning, and child behavior during interactions with mother. Mothers of secure children were more emotionally and verbally responsive to their children than were mothers of insecure children, and secure children were emotionally more positive to their mothers than were insecure children. Mothers of secure children also reported higher levels of social supports than did mothers of insecure children. Finally, dyads with children who lacked unitary, coherent attachment strategies (i.e., anxious depressed, defended/coercive, and insecure other) showed the worst functioning in all domains relative to all other attachment groups. Similar but slightly less robust findings were obtained with socioeconomic variables statistically controlled. These results lend support to the PAA as a valid system for the conceptualization and measurement of quality of attachment among preschoolers. Future research applications with the PAA are discussed.

IMITATION AND SELF-ESTEEM AS DETERMINANTS OF SELF-CRITICAL BEHAVIOR

This study investigated the influence of self-rated esteem and exposure to an adult model on childrens learning of self-critical behavior. Half the Ss first observed a same-sex model playing a bowling game on which scores were experimentally controlled. Following low scores, the model gave up rewards and made self-critical comments. While Ss imitated the model s performance standards for forgoing reinforcement, few of them imitated self-critical comments. Children not exposed to a model neither gave up tokens nor made any comments while playing the game. Scores from 3 self-rating esteem measures were not related to any dependent variable. Apparently, self-critical behavior can be learned through imitation of models, and self-denial of rewards is relatively independent of other types of self-evaluations.

An Evaluation of Alternative Modes of Child Psychotherapy

The increasing competition for child mental-health dollars, the related growing concern about accountability to funding agencies, and the demands of science all suggest the need for comprehensive outcome studies in which alternative modes of child psychotherapy are contrasted. Critical reviews of the child-psychotherapy literature indicate that the majority of existing comparative studies suffer from serious methodological flaws that prevent the studies from serving their intended function. The present chapter is therefore directed toward an examination of the major methodological issues in this field, which are organized under the domains of general design strategies, patient and treatment variables, choice of measures, follow-up assessments, and evaluation. Alternative strategies for the solution of methodological difficulties are discussed, and studies illustrating exemplary practices are pointed out. Cost-benefit or effectiveness analysis is discussed as a logical and necessary extension of traditional psychotherapy outcomeresearch. Finally, special attention is given to political problems associated with the conduct of comparative psychotherapy research in clinical settings.

Factors affecting the acquisition and elimination of children's donating behavior

Abstract Thirty-five 6- to 10-year-old children with initial low rates of donating to help a peer either simply received a fine for each failure to donate ( n = 7) or also were informed of the contingency between the fine and failure to donate ( n = 28). Explanation of the contingency was necessary to increase childrens donation rates. Donations continued at high rates during a gradual, unannounced removal of the fine contingency, but decreased when children were informed that fines were no longer in effect, particularly for children who had failed to donate at least once during training and had actually been fined. Overall, addition of a distraction or an inequity procedure did not reduce donating below rate reductions due to the announced extinction procedure alone.

Behavior Analysis and Developmental Psychology

Relationships between the fields of behavior analysis and developmental psychology are examined. First, the influence of behavior-analytic research within developmental psychology is surveyed. In the

The Prevention of Childhood Behavior Disorders

The idea of preventing behavioral disorders has great intuitive appeal. In addition to sparing children and their families needless suffering, the prevention of behavioral problems would ease the service burden on overextended educational and community treatment services and would constitute a social and an economic blessing. There are many different types of potential preventive measures, and prevention programs can be aimed at various points in the development of a behavioral disorder. Caplan (1964) has suggested distinguishing among prevention efforts in terms of their temporal focus. The term primary prevention is used for programs intended to reduce the incidence of new cases of various types of disorders. Two other types of intervention occur after individuals have been identified as exhibiting problems. Programs aimed at reducing the duration or severity of a problem are termed secondary prevention efforts; andtertiary prevention consists of attempts to reduce long-term disability such as that leading to chronic institutionalization. While useful, Caplan’s scheme does not entirely resolve classification problems, since variations in definitions of target behavior and stated program goals can result in differing category placement for essentially identical programs. For example, a project dealing with children who have committed criminal acts might be conceived as a secondary prevention effort to see that an existing problem does not worsen.