The nature of linguistic emphasis was studied from audio recordings of 29 mother-child dyads. Nineteen dyads involved mothers interacting with their 4-year-olds who evidenced language impairments. Approximately 84 percent of children evidencing language impairments could be so classified based on the acoustic variables associated with maternal use…

Reports on a study of parent-child interactions in a children's museum demonstrating that parents shape and support children's scientific thinking in everyday, nonobligatory activity. Finds that when children engaged an exhibit with their parents, their exploration of evidence was observed to be longer, broader, and more focused on relevant…

Examined competing explanations for hypothesized family effects on adolescents' educational outcome beliefs. Found no support for deficit theories of family functioning. Findings underscore the importance of taking family processes into account in predicting educational outcome beliefs, and findings regarding measures of connection followed the…

Used national, longitudinal data from two generations to assess explanations for intergenerational transmission of marital instability, one based on relationship skills and the other on marital commitment. Results suggest that offspring with divorced parents have an elevated risk of seeing their own marriages end in divorce because they hold a…

Examined parents' assistance of preadolescents' scientific reasoning while generating and interpreting a series of trials to understand the causal structure of a complex system. Found that parents assumed most of the difficult conceptual tasks, did not relinquish them over time, and missed opportunities to help children interpret evidence. Parents…

Examines contemporary research on parental socialization. Highlights research designs that consider inherited, dispositional, and experiential factors in estimating influence. Describes evidence addressing issues of causality regarding the scope and nature of parental influences. Recommends basing conclusions about the significance of parenting on…

Study seeks to determine the relationship between parental alcoholism, feelings of self-esteem and depression among children of alcoholics (COAs) in a sample of 649 African-American adolescents. The three instruments employed are discussed as well as the study results. Implications for counseling and prevention efforts among African-American…

Videotaped parent-child play behaviors of preschool children in pretend and physical play sessions, noting children's play with same-sex peers. Context influenced gender differentiated patterns of parent-child play behavior. Girls engaged in more pretend play, and boys were engaged in more physical play with peers. Parents contributed to…

Examined predictors of body image in preschool children, including models, verbal messages, physiological factors, and experience of competence related to body image. Data from child interviews and parent and teacher questionnaires indicated that there were no gender differences in children's body image. Messages from the mother to "be bigger"…

This study examined whether child, parental, and socioenvironmental factors predict disruptive school behavior two years later. Data from a sample of 10-to 12-year-old youths, including 289 African American, 183 Hispanic/Latino, and 335 non-Hispanic white youths from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth were analyzed. Findings indicate that…

Cohort-sequential latent growth modeling was used to analyze longitudinal data for children's externalizing behavior from four overlapping age cohorts (4, 5, 6, and 7 years at first assessment) measured at three annual time points. The data included mother and father ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist and the Five-Factor Personality Inventory…

This comprehensive study of mutual responsiveness examined 102 mothers and 102 fathers interacting with their children at 7 and 15 months. Responsiveness was studied from developmental and individual differences perspectives, and assessed using macroscopic ratings and microscopic event coding. The latter captured parents' reactions to children's…

Three-hundred-and-thirty undergraduates at a large southeastern university completed a confidential anonymous 26 item questionnaire designed to assess the effect of parental divorce/remarriage on the relationship with their respective parents and on their own romantic relationships. The data revealed several significant relationships-respondents…

In this article the author argues that narrative accounts of the effects of parental mental disorder (particularly mood disturbance) on children's functioning may provide unprecedented windows on crucial issues of silence, stigmatization, diagnosis, etiology, and treatment, which can mutually inform empirical research efforts. In publishing a…

This study examined the extent to which perceived occupational barriers and perceived parental support predicted career certainty and career indecision in a sample of African American adolescents. Perceived occupational barriers were positively predictive of career indecision, and perceived parental support was positively associated with career…