ABSTRACT
We examined the relations between preschool boys' behavior problems and mothers' interpretations of children's emotion expressions. A sample of 31 mothers of oppositional boys and 28 control mothers responded to standard stimuli depicting child emotional reactions to maternal control attempts; mothers were instructed to think of the stimuli as either (a) their own child or (b) an unfamiliar child. Mothers of oppositional boys were more likely to generate negative interpretations than were control mothers when thinking of their own children; however, this difference did not generalize to the explicitly unfamiliar child condition. Mothers of oppositional boys demonstrated negative and comparison mothers demonstrated positive interpretive tendencies toward their own children. Findings suggest that child emotion cues may trigger biased maternal cognitions even in the absence of child misbehavior.
Subject(s)
Affect , Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders/psychology , Facial Expression , Mothers , Social Perception , Adult , Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders/diagnosis , Child, Preschool , Cues , Depression/diagnosis , Depression/psychology , Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , Female , Humans , Male , Mothers/psychology , Surveys and QuestionnairesABSTRACT
Cognitive response repertoires to videotaped child noncompliance episodes were examined in mothers of aggressive (MAs) and nonaggressive 4-6-year-old boys. Mothers provided open-ended solutions to three subtypes of child noncompliance under conditions of time pressure, or after they waited for 15 s to consider alternatives. Solutions were coded as assistance/facilitation, coercion, deference, or explanation/clarification. Compared with controls, MAs offered fewer explanation/clarification responses, more coercive responses, and fewer unique solutions during pressured responding. Two to 6 weeks later, mothers were videotaped while participating with their sons in a challenging block building task. Maternal responses to the vignettes predicted conflict escalation during block building, even after rates of concurrent and past child noncompliance were partialled out. Implications for parent-training models are considered.
