Nazan Aksan

Mother–Child and Father–Child Mutually Responsive Orientation in the First 2 Years and Children’s Outcomes at Preschool Age: Mechanisms of Influence

Mechanisms accounting for the effects of mutually responsive orientation (MRO) at 7, 15, and 25 months in 102 mother-child and father-child dyads on child internalization and self-regulation at 52 months were examined. Two mediators at 38 months were tested: parental power assertion and child self-representation. For mother-child relationships, the causal pathway involving power assertion was supported for both outcomes. Diminished power assertion fully mediated beneficial effect of mother-child MRO on internalization and partially mediated its effect on self-regulation. For father-child relationships, MRO predicted self-regulation, but the mediational paths were unsupported. Paternal power assertion correlated negatively with both outcomes but was not a mediator. Although MRO with both parents correlated with child self-representation, and it correlated with self-regulation, this mediational path was unsupported.

Deriving Childhood Temperament Measures from Emotion-eliciting Behavioral Episodes: Scale Construction and Initial Validation

The authors describe the development and initial validation of a home-based version of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB), which was designed to assess childhood temperament with a comprehensive series of emotion-eliciting behavioral episodes. This article provides researchers with general guidelines for assessing specific behaviors using the Lab-TAB and for forming behavioral composites that correspond to commonly researched temperament dimensions. We used mother ratings and independent postvisit observer ratings to provide validity evidence in a community sample of 4.5-year-old children. 12 Lab-TAB behavioral episodes were employed, yielding 24 within-episode temperament components that collapsed into 9 higher level composites (Anger, Sadness, Fear, Shyness, Positive Expression, Approach, Active Engagement, Persistence, and Inhibitory Control). These dimensions of temperament are similar to those found in questionnaire-based assessments. Correlations among the 9 composites were low to moderate, suggesting relative independence. As expected, agreement between Lab-TAB measures and postvisit observer ratings was stronger than agreement between the Lab-TAB and mother questionnaire. However, for Active Engagement and Shyness, mother ratings did predict child behavior in the Lab-TAB quite well. Findings demonstrate the feasibility of emotion-eliciting temperament assessment methodologies, suggest appropriate methods for data aggregation into trait-level constructs and set some expectations for associations between Lab-TAB dimensions and the degree of cross-method convergence between the Lab-TAB and other commonly used temperament assessments.

A developmental model of maternal and child contributions to disruptive conduct: the first six years.

BACKGROUND The parent-child relationship is considered important for childrens future conscience, and conscience is seen as protecting them from disruptive behavior problems, but specific mechanisms of this developmental process are rarely studied. METHODS This multi-trait multi-method study examined, in a longitudinal design, paths linking early maternal responsiveness to the child with the childs future conscience and disruptive behavior in 102 mother-child dyads. We tested a conceptual model where maternal responsiveness to the child, observed at 7 and 15 months, engenders a responsive stance in the child, observed at 25 and 38 months; that stance, in turn, becomes enduring and generalized, promoting multiple aspects of the childs conscience, observed at 52 months. In turn, conscience serves as a protective factor from disruptive behavior problems, rated by mothers and fathers at 67 months. RESULTS The postulated paths were examined using sequential regressions and mediation effects were tested using bootstrapping analyses. Child responsive stance at 25-38 months fully mediated the link between maternal responsiveness in infancy and conscience at 52 months, and conscience fully mediated the link between child responsive stance and future disruptive behavior at 67 months. CONCLUSIONS Examination of developmental links among early maternal behavior, the childs responsive stance toward the mother, conscience, and disruptive behavior is a promising step toward elucidating mechanisms of childrens adaptive and maladaptive trajectories.

Conscience in Childhood: Old Questions, New Answers.

Although conscience has been the focus of reflection for centuries, fundamental questions regarding its organization have not been fully answered. To address those questions, the authors applied structural equation modeling techniques to longitudinal data comprising multiple behavioral measures of childrens conscience, obtained in parallel fashion at 33 and 45 months. The measures encompassed moral emotion (guilt and empathic distress) and rule-compatible conduct (internalization of maternal prohibitions and requests and of another adults rules). Confirmatory factor analyses supported a differentiated view of conscience with 2 latent factors at both ages: Moral Emotion and Rule-Compatible Conduct. The structure of conscience was remarkably stable over time. The coherence between Moral Emotion and Rule-Compatible Conduct factors increased as children grew older.

Examining the Familial Link between Positive Affect and Empathy Development in the Second Year.

Within a sample of 584 twins aged 12 to 25 months (292 pairs) studied longitudinally, positive affect measured through two laboratory pleasure episodes and maternal report at 12 and 22 months significantly predicted empathy-related helping and hypothesis testing assessed between 19 and 25 months. Girls showed significantly more concern than did boys, whereas boys engaged in hypothesis testing significantly more than did girls. Behavior-genetic analyses indicated substantial shared environmental influences for positive affect and empathy composites of helping and concern. Genetics and the nonshared environment influenced empathy-related hypothesis testing. The best fitting bivariate model included shared and nonshared environmental influences on positive affect and helping, with environment accounting for the covariation between the two traits. The covariation between positive affect and hypothesis testing was genetically influenced.

Parent-Child Interactions and Obesity Prevention: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

Child obesity research has generally not examined multiple layers of parent–child relationships during weight-related activities such as feeding, eating and play. A literature review was conducted to locate empirical studies that measured parent–child interactions and child eating and child weight variables; five papers met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. The findings of the review revealed that parent–child relationships are an important element in explaining the unhealthy trend of childhood obesity. We argue that prevention/intervention strategies must extend on the current models of parenting by targeting the family from a bi-directional perspective, and focusing, specifically, on the mutually responsive orientation that exists in the parent–child relationship.

Conscience in Childhood: Past, Present, and Future

We ask three questions: What are the components of young childrens conscience? How are they organized? How does early conscience develop? We discuss the changing perspectives on each of those questions. We describe the shift from a focus on a single component of conscience (moral emotions, conduct, cognition) to a growing emphasis on their integration; from a view of conscience as loosely organized to a view of a coherent system of causally related components; from a focus on older children and adolescents to young toddlers and preschoolers; and from a top-down view of parental discipline immediately following child misbehavior to a focus on mutual processes between the parent and the child that occur in multiple socialization contexts and are shaped by the history of the parent-child relationship and the childs individuality. We conclude by outlining new directions for research on early conscience.

The development of stranger fear in infancy and toddlerhood: normative development, individual differences, antecedents, and outcomes

Despite implications that stranger fear is an important aspect of developing behavioral inhibition, a known risk factor for anxiety, normative and atypical developmental trajectories of stranger fear across infancy and toddlerhood remain understudied. We used a large, longitudinal data set (N = 1285) including multi-trait, multi-method assessments of temperament to examine the normative course of development for stranger fear and to explore the possibility that individual differences exist in trajectories of stranger fear development between 6 and 36 months of age. A latent class growth analysis suggested four different trajectories of stranger fear during this period. Stable, high levels of stranger fear over time were associated with poorer RSA suppression at 6 months of age. Rates of concordance in trajectory-based class membership for identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (dizygotic) twins, along with associations between atypical stranger fear development and greater anxiety-related maternal characteristics, suggested that individual differences in developmental trajectories of stranger fear may be heritable. Importantly, trajectories of stranger fear during infancy and toddlerhood were linked to individual differences in behavioral inhibition, with chronically high levels of stranger fear and sharp increases in stranger fear over time related to greater levels of inhibition than other developmental trajectories.

Derivation and Prediction of Temperamental Types among Preschoolers.

The number and nature of temperamental types in 488 children aged 3 years 6 months was examined on the basis of a broad set of temperamental characteristics, including positive and negative emotionality and the attentional and behavioral control domains. Configural frequency analysis methods showed clear support for two temperament types: controlled-nonexpressive and noncontrolled-expressive. These types showed meaningful differences against external criteria related to a wide range of problem behaviors from the emotional, social, and attentional domains. The reports of problem behaviors were obtained contemporaneously from fathers and caregivers. These findings replicated a year later when children were aged 4 years 6 months. Furthermore, the findings showed that infant and toddler-age temperamental characteristics differentiated these preschool-aged types. The authors discuss the implications of the results for a categorical view of temperament-personality.

Augmented reality cues and elderly driver hazard perception

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of augmented reality (AR) cues in improving driving safety among elderly drivers who are at increased crash risk because of cognitive impairments. Background: Cognitively challenging driving environments pose a particular crash risk for elderly drivers. AR cuing is a promising technology to mitigate risk by directing driver attention to roadway hazards. We investigate whether AR cues improve or interfere with hazard perception in elderly drivers with age-related cognitive decline. Method: A total of 20 elderly (M = 73 years, SD = 5) licensed drivers with a range of cognitive abilities measured by a speed-of-processing (SOP) composite participated in a 1-hr drive in an interactive, fixed-base driving simulator. Each participant drove through six straight, 6-mile-long, rural roadway scenarios following a lead vehicle. AR cues directed attention to potential roadside hazards in three of the scenarios, and the other three were uncued (baseline) drives. Effects of AR cuing were evaluated with respect to (a) detection of hazardous target objects, (b) interference with detecting nonhazardous secondary objects, and (c) impairment in maintaining safe distance behind a lead vehicle. Results: AR cuing improved the detection of hazardous target objects of low visibility. AR cues did not interfere with detection of nonhazardous secondary objects and did not impair ability to maintain safe distance behind a lead vehicle. SOP capacity did not moderate those effects. Conclusion: AR cues show promise for improving elderly driver safety by increasing hazard detection likelihood without interfering with other driving tasks, such as maintaining safe headway.