Norma Deitch Feshbach

Children's trust: Theory, assessment, development, and research directions

Abstract Trust is a significant variable in childrens personality, social, and intellectual development. Although trust research has primarily explored adult behavior, there is a growing body of research on children, with a particular emphasis on trust development within friendship relationships. This paper reviews the extant literature on childrens trust. After summarizing historical theoretical perspectives, noting particularly Rotters influence on the field, we offer a theoretical model of trust that synthesizes previous models. We describe various methods for assessing trust and argue for a multimethod approach consistent with our synthetic model. We review three research areas: antecedents to trust, the developmental course of trust in friendships, and correlates of trust. Implications for future research are indicated, and the absence of studies of practical applications is noted. Several programmatic applications for enhancing childrens trust are presented.

Learning to care: A positive approach to child training and discipline

This paper is addressed to the relevance of an empathy training program for school children as an alternative to the use of corporal punishment for the management of aggressive behavior in the classroom. After reviewing the theoretical relationship of empathy and aggression, the training procedures and findings from field studies concerned with Empathy Training are presented. The educational and developmental implications of using skill‐oriented training programs in the classroom are discussed.

Training affect comprehension in young children: An experimental evaluation

Abstract Preschool- and kindergarten-age children were randomly assigned to either an experimental training program designed to enhance affective understanding and related perspective-taking, or to one of two control training groups. Experimental and control training subjects, in groups of four, met daily for 20-min sessions during a 1-week period. The experimental training sessions focussed on recognition of emotional cues and attention to how other people feel in various situations, and the control training curriculum was addressed to the understanding of television advertisements. Significant training and developmental effects were obtained on a measure of affect identification administered immediately after training. Differences on the same measure administered 1 week later were nonsignificant. Significant training effects were reflected 1 week after training on a measure that assessed references to affect in descriptions of pictures depicting affect eliciting situations. The findings indicate that even young children of kindergarten and preschool age can profit from affective education.

The effects of violence in childhood 1

Impaications.of the use and misuse of physical puniZhment in the socialization and training of children is the subject of this discussion. This discussion deals primarily with the implications of the use by parents of physical pain as a child-rearing technique by which they attempt to implement their goals for their children, whether it be the acquisition of positive behaviors or the extinction of unacceptable or negative behaviors. An unfavorable view is taken Of parental resort to physical punishment, based on a personal position and empirical psychological research. The personal reasons include: (1) the issue of the unfairness of an adult physically striking a child, (2) the issue-of-language, i.e. the reliance of humans on verbal means in the training of their young, and (3) the issue of intentionality, the deliberate infliction of physical pain. On the scientific .level, three principal sources of empirical literature are drawn upon to support the position of opposition of physical punishment. The first relates to studies on , the consequences of punishment in the context of child-rearing practices; the second relevant data sources are the experimental studies of the effects of punishment; and the third pertinent set of investigations are those studies relating inhibitory traits to other personality attributes, particularly aggression. (CR)

Early childhood special education programs, evaluation, and social policies

Norma Deitch Feshbach, PhD Professor Departments of Education and Psychology University of California Los Angeles, California (Currently on sabbatical leave, Oxford University) THE OPERATION of early childhood special education programs, how they are evaluated, and the formation of social policies for handicapped children are closely interrelated. Each of these factors is essential, not only for the continued funding and possible expansion of these programs, but for their vitality and improvement. A focus on only one factor, apart from the others, results in the kind of policy-making vacuum that currently characterizes many social and educational programs, that is, programs that lack sufficient documentation of their effectiveness and a valid basis on which to justify their continued existence. Policy-relevant evaluation questions can provide information to federal and state decision makers regarding the operation of early childhood special education programs. Policyrelevant evaluation questions are usually targeted toward policy makers who must determine program priorities and allocate

Children and television advertising: Some research and some perspectives

Abstract This papers focus is on televised food advertisements and their effects on young children. Pertinent literature that demonstrates childrens learning from television commercials is reviewed. A field study using a graphic portraying nutrition information, suitable for television use, is summarized. From information derived from this graphic, young children were able to evaluate the nutrition content of foods. The authors raise questions concerning directions for future research and action and a possible role psychologists and other health care personnel could play in this process.

A Note on the Use of the Semantic Differential in Measuring Teacher Personality and Values

THE major objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between student teachers’ self-perceptions and their conceptions of the ideal child in the classroom. Several investigators (McKeachie, Lin, Milholland, and Isaacson, 1966; Washburn and Heil, 1960) have reported evidence indicating that the degree of similarity between students’ and teachers’ personality is a significant factor in determining successful classroom interaction, learning, and achievement. The hypothesis of the present study is that there is a positive relationship between teacher’s self-perceptions and perceptions of the ideal child, and further that the degree of relationship should vary with particular personality attributes of the teacher.

A demonstration of the use of graphics in teaching children nutrition

Summary A study to explore the effectiveness of using graphics to teach young children about the nutrient and energy value of foods was conducted. A robot-like figure was developed as the graphic model for use with 88 subjects age 4 to 10 years old. The effectiveness of the graphic was compared with a numeric method of transmitting the same nutrient/caloric information. The results show that the study subjects were clearly able to understand and use graphic information to make judgments about food, both immediately after an orientation session and a week later. Younger children were less accurate in reporting/reproducing information; however, children at all the age levels tested were able to comprehend the complex relationship of calories and nutrients to evaluate foods. These results were reported to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in hearings on a proposed Food Advertising Trade Regulation Rule.

Every Child's Birthright: In Defense of MotheringEVERY CHILD'S BIRTHRIGHT: IN DEFENSE OF MOTHERING. FraibergSelma. New York: Basic Books, 1977, xiii + 162 pp.,

would include using California’s Conciliation Court Law (Elkin, 1973) as a model for legislation. Intelligent focus upon family policy is desperately needed among family scholars to help provide impetus for change at state and national levels. Unfortunately this volume does not advance those efforts nor does i t contribute to an understanding of American families. Gilbert D. Nass University of Connecticut

8.95.

must be made explicit and addressed. Should we fail, the author argues, the headlong, driven urge to construct, to master-cut off as it is from knowledge of the erotic, of what i s life-sustaining, of what i s life-denying-will destroy us. It may be argued that the edifice Dinnerstein builds i s too fragile to support the weight of despotism, the sexual double standard, man’s destruction of the universe, woman’s collusion, and more. Equally, the notion that an integration of forces heretofore impossible to achieve can come about once early child care i s no longer mother-dominated i s also difficult to embrace. Even Dinnerstein i s unsure what wil l be the outcome of men’s participation in child care: At least, she argues, ”whatever gender comes to mean under these conditions. . . its meaning wil l no longer be dominated by girls’ continuity and boys’ discontinuity, with the adults who initiate us into the human condition” (p. 244). There is a compellingness to this book not explained by lucidity of exposition. In fact, the heavy use of footnotes, the insertion of separate arguments in the form of “boxes,” and complicated sentence structure make for disruptive reading. The compellingness stems in part from the passion and beauty of the author’s prose. But more, it derives from one’s sense that that which is least rational-that half of us should be menials while the other half makes history, that the course of history should be so repetitively oppressive, that we destroy the only world in which we live-that this irrationality must be explained by forces that themselves are deeply irrational, primitive, and universal. The Mermaid and the Minotaur seems timely in its message to those of us who, in our need to affirm our capacity to create things as well as babies, risk losing that knowledge that i s uniquely accessible to us. In truth, however, this work is so urgent and so broadly significant, so demanding that we all grow up, that it i s a book for us all. lanice Porter Gump 209 Crestmoor Circle Silver Spring, Maryland.