Marie Stievenart

The development of children's inhibition: Does parenting matter?

Whereas a large body of research has investigated the maturation of inhibition in relation to the prefrontal cortex, far less research has been devoted to environmental factors that could contribute to inhibition improvement. The aim of the current study was to test whether and to what extent parenting matters for inhibition development from 2 to 8years of age. Data were collected from 421 families, with 348 mother-child dyads and 342 father-child dyads participating. Childrens inhibition capacities and parenting behaviors were assessed in a three-wave longitudinal data collection. The main analyses examined the impact of parenting on the development of childrens inhibition capacities. They were conducted using a multilevel modeling (MLM) framework. The results lead to the conclusion that both mothers and fathers contribute through their child-rearing behavior to their childrens executive functioning, even when controlling for age-related improvement (maturation) and important covariates such as gender, verbal IQ, and place of enrollment. More significant relations between childrens inhibition development and parenting were displayed for mothers than for fathers. More precisely, parenting behaviors that involve higher monitoring, lower discipline, inconsistency and negative controlling, and a positive parenting style are associated with good development of inhibition capacities in children.

The reciprocal relation between children's attachment representations and their cognitive ability

This study explores reciprocal relations between children’s attachment representations and their cognitive ability. Previous literature has mainly focused on the prediction of cognitive abilities from attachment, rarely on the reverse prediction. This was explored in the current research. Attachment representations were assessed with the Attachment Story Completion Task (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990); the IQ was measured with the WPPSI-III (Wechsler, 2004). Data were collected twice, at a two-year interval, from about 400 preschoolers. Reasoning IQ was found to influence the development of secure attachment representations, while attachment security and disorganization influenced later verbal IQ. The implications of the findings for both clinical and research purposes are discussed in the light of the interactions between cognitive abilities and attachment representations.

Parental differential treatment, child’s externalizing behavior and sibling relationships: Bridging links with child’s perception of favoritism and personality, and parents’ self-efficacy

This study examined the associations between parental differential treatment (PDT), children’s externalizing behavior (EB), and sibling relationships, as well as the intervening effects of children’s perceptions of favoritism, personality, and parents’ self-efficacy (SE). A total of 117 families having a child clinically referred for EB problems were studied. First, the role of PDT and perceived favoritism on EB and sibling relationships was examined. PDT was moderately related to both EB and sibling affection. Perception of favoritism was only predictive of sibling hostility. Second, EB effects on PDT were examined and the mediating role of parents’ SE within this relation was explored. EB predicted higher level PDT in parents and the link between PDT and EB was mediated by parental SE.

From Parents to Siblings and Peers: The Wonderful Story of Social Development

The objective of the current research was to test the hypotheses arising from the epigenetic view of social development and from the wider perspective offered by the social network model with three interactional systems, that is, child–parent, child–sibling, and child–peer. They were tested in two prospective longitudinal studies using a multi-informant and multi-method strategy. Study 1 was conducted among 83 children and their parents and Study 2 among 190 children. Attachment security with parents was assessed when the children were 4 years of age, relationships with siblings at 5 years of age, and relationships with peers at 6 years of age. Attachment to parent was found to explain a limited part of variations in later social relationships with siblings and peers. The sibling interactional system had a consistent and enduring effect on later peer relationships. With regard to the two theoretical backgrounds under consideration, neither was able to account for equivocal findings displayed in the two studies as well as in previous research. The wonderful story of social development seems to be a very complex process for which new models are needed.

The Friends and Family Interview: Measurement invariance across Belgium and Romania

The Friends and Family Interview (FFI; Steele & Steele, 2005), a semi-structured interview assessing attachment representations, is used in the context of an international research project. In the current study, the first step in the validation process of the FFI was to check whether this instrument measures coherence in the same way across countries. Coherence in attachment narratives is a central marker of secure and organized attachment representations in childhood and adulthood. Analysis were conducted on the data from Belgian (n = 35) and Romanian (n = 43) adopted adolescents and revealed that the FFI coherence is similar across the two samples. Correlations between coherence and attachment categories were also computed, confirming the relation between both these variables. Empirical implications of these analyses on the FFI are discussed.

When there Seem to be No Predetermining Factors: Early Child and Proximal Family Risk Predicting Externalizing Behavior in Young Children Incurring No Distal Family Risk.

The main objective of the current study was to examine the impact of two child risk factors, i.e. personality and inhibition, and two proximal family risk factors, i.e. parenting and attachment, and the impact of their cumulative effect on later externalizing behavior among young children incurring no distal family risk. Data were collected in a longitudinal two-wave design from 161 non-referred and referred children aged three to five years at the onset of the study. All of the children were raised in families of middle to high socio-economic status, i.e. their parents were educated to a middle to high level, had access to the job market and lived together as couples. The four risk domains were assessed at the onset of the study, while EB was rated both at the onset of the study and in the 24-month follow-up. Results confirmed that the four risk domains were each both correlates of EB and efficient at discriminating non-referred from referred children; that their combination regardless of their content (cumulative risk) provided a strong prediction of both later EB and non-referred vs referred sample membership. The results are discussed both for research and clinical purposes.

Cross-Informant Ratings of Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior in Adolescent–Parent Pairs in Six Countries. Does Being Adopted Make a Difference?

Low agreement between self-reports and parent reports of the behavioral adjustment of adolescents has been widely documented in the literature. However, it has been little studied in connection with adoptees. In the current research, the magnitude of agreement between reports of adolescents’ behavioral problems given by the adolescents themselves and their parents and the direction of the possible discrepancies between these reports were studied. A comparison was made between adopted and nonadopted adolescent–parent dyads. The research questions were tested on a sample of 294 adolescent–parent pairs (189 adoptees and 105 controls) from Belgium, Romania, Chile, Switzerland, Italy, and the Netherlands. Correlation analyses together with Fisher R to Z comparisons between countries and between adopted and nonadopted dyads and Repeated Measures Analyses revealed that both the magnitude of agreement and the direction of the discrepancies in internalizing and externalizing behavioral ratings between informants, that is, parents and their adolescent, did not depend on whether the adolescents were adopted or not. Compared with their parents, both adopted and control adolescents reported problems more frequently. Some variations in the magnitude of agreement were found between countries. An interaction effect between gender and informant indicated that discrepancies for internalizing behavior were higher in parent–adolescent daughter pairs than in parent–adolescent son pairs.

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.

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.

Revision and validation of the Family Apperception Test: some psychometric properties.

The Family Apperception Test (FAT) is a projective assessment procedure based on the family system theory. FAT allows the subjects’ affects and feelings about their family to be assessed. The original version and its French translation removed some of the conceptual and psychometric limitations of previous projective tests and family assessment procedures but several questions remained. The current study proposes several modifications to the conceptual background, administration, coding procedure, and standardization of the FAT, which considerably improve its psychometric properties. Data were collected on 168 typical and clinical children in the French-speaking part of Belgium. The results provide significant evidence for inter- and intra-assessor reliability; the factorial analysis and the internal consistency of the revised version were good; the FAT enabled us to discriminate between typical children and those in the clinical sample. The discussion focuses on the interest and limits of the quantitative coding procedure, based on several categories conceptualized as risk versus protective factors. The FAT is characterized by a complementary approach—both quantitative and qualitative—to the children and their families.