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CHILD AND FAMILY DEVELOPMENT
IN THE FIRST TWO DECADES OF LIFE
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Marc H. Bornstein, PhD, Head, Child and Family Research Section Maurice Haynes, PhD, Staff Scientist Chun-Shin Hahn, PhD, Research Fellow Nanmathi Manian, PhD, Research Fellow Charlie Hendricks, PhD, Senior Research Assistant Clay Mash, PhD, Senior Research Assistant Erin Hunter, Research Psychologist Kathy Painter, Research Psychologist Joan Suwalsky, Research Psychologist Motti Gini, PhD, Visiting Fellow Amy Miller, PhD, Intramural Training Award Fellow Melissa Chatham, Technical Training Fellow Wai Chow, Technical Training Fellow Asha Goldweber, Technical Training Fellow Lynsay Ayer, Postbaccalaureate Fellow Emily Beatty, Postbaccalaureate Fellow Katherine Hill, Postbaccalaureate Fellow Yoon Lee, Postbaccalaureate Fellow Kathryn Murphy, Postbaccalaureate Fellow Bridget Nolan, Postbaccalaureate Fellow Aaron Rakow, Postbaccalaureate Fellow Elizabeth Reitz, Postbaccalaureate Fellow Temekia Toney, Postbaccalaureate Fellow |
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We investigate dispositional, experiential, and environmental factors that contribute to physical, mental, emotional, and social development in human beings during the rst two decades of life course. Our overall goals are to describe, analyze, and assess the capabilities and proclivities of developing children, including their genetic characteristics, physiological functioning, perceptual and cognitive abilities, and emotional, social, and interactional styles as well as the nature of and consequences for children and parents of family development and children's exposure to and interactions with their physical surroundings. Project designs are experimental, longitudinal, and cross-sectional as well as intra- and cross-cultural. Sociodemographic comparisons include family socioeconomic status, maternal age and employment status, and child parity and daycare experience. In addition to the United States, study sites include Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, England, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Peru, and the Republic of South Korea. Parenting and child development Bornstein, Hahn, Haynes, Hendricks, Leach, Painter, Suwalsky We are broadly concerned with analyzing and understanding the roles of parenting in human development. Methodological assessments of parenting show sometimes similar, sometimes different patterns of findings reflective of different approaches to the same problem. In one study, we compared frequencies of behaviors of mothers and infants in two cultures based on continuous coding with frequencies based on time-sampling and evaluated the resulting patterns yielding different estimates of absolute frequency of typical maternal and infant behaviors between individuals and between cultural groups. However, time-sampling adequately preserved the relative ranking of mother and infant behaviors among individuals and between cultural groups. If research is concerned with the effect of relative standing of individuals and/or groups on frequency of maternal or infant behaviors, under specified circumstances time-sampling and continuous coding yield comparable results.
We investigated parenting knowledge in mothers of young children, where mothers obtain their knowledge, and what factors principally influence the amount and accuracy of that knowledge. U.S. mothers of two-year-olds completed a survey of parenting knowledge and sociodemographic and health status variables as well as their sources of support for parenting. Japanese American ( JA) and South American (SA) mothers acculturating to the U.S. gave the same information, as did mothers representing six additional countries (Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, and Japan). U.S. mothers scored well on the evaluation of parenting knowledge; mothers' age, education, and access to written materials were each uniquely associated with higher scores. We found no differences between mothers of girls and boys, between birth and adoptive mothers, or in effects of mothers' employment status; however, adult mothers scored higher than adolescent mothers, and mothers improved in their knowledge of parenting with time. Acculturating mothers scored less well than U.S. mothers but better than mothers from their cultures of origin; U.S., Israeli, and Belgian mothers tended to score highest. Written materials and attendance in childbirth classes contributed to parenting knowledge in non–U.S. groups but the contributions of fathers and friends/neighbors emerged as significant. Understanding variation in parenting knowledge and its sources has implications for parenting education as well as for pediatrician training and interactions with parents.
We also examined the roles of multiple contributors to variation in key maternal perceptions of their own parenting. In separate predictions of self-perceived competence, satisfaction, investment, and role balance in European American mothers of rst-born 20-month-olds, we explored maternal socioeconomic status (SES), employment, parenting support, child gender, language and social competence, temperament, maternal intelligence, personality, and parenting knowledge and style. Hierarchical regression analyses supported highly differentiated patterns of unique predictive relations to each domain of self-perceived parenting. Nonetheless, some predictors consistently contributed to individual parenting self-perceptions, most prominently parenting knowledge and dissonance between actual and ideal maternal and parental parenting styles. SES, maternal employment, community support, and maternal personality also contributed to self-perceptions, as did child temperament. Although the potential contributors to parenting self-perceptions may be several, prominent contributors to any one self-perception are specific and few, a conclusion that articulates with the modular view of parenting.
Bornstein MH, ed. Handbook of Parenting (2e). Volume 1: Children and Parenting; Volume 2: Biology and Ecology of Parenting; Volume 3: Status and Social Conditions of Parenting; Volume 4: Applied Parenting; Volume 5: Practical Parenting. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.B Bornstein MH. Measurement variability in infant and maternal behavioral assessment. Infant Behav Dev 2002;25:413-432. Bornstein MH. Parenting infants. In: Bornstein MH, ed. Handbook of Parenting (2e). Volume. 1: Children and Parenting. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002:3-43. Bornstein MH, Bradley RH, eds. Socioeconomic Status, Parenting, and Child Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. Bornstein MH, Hendricks C, Hahn CS, Haynes OM, Painter KM, Tamis-LeMonda CS. Contributors to self-perceived competence, satisfaction, investment, and role balance in maternal parenting: a multivariate ecological view. Parenting Sci Practice 2003;4; in press. Family and child acculturation in modern America Bornstein, Cote* Current census statistics indicate that one out of every five children under the age of 18, or 14 million children, in the United States are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrant parents. Yet the nature of acculturation itself is elusive and remains poorly understood; moreover, acculturation is a major transforming force on child health and human development. We study families acculturating to the United States from Japan and South America, assessing the role of acculturation on parenting, child development, and family life. One study investigated parenting beliefs among mothers from these countries. First, we undertook a longitudinal evaluation of cultural differences and developmental continuity and stability in cultural cognitions (acculturation, individualism, collectivism) and parenting cognitions (attributions, self-perceptions, knowledge) when children were five and 20 months of age. SA mothers were more collectivistic than JA mothers. Cultural group and attribution differences emerged for mothers' parenting attributions in successful situations, whereas child age and attribution differences emerged for parenting attributions in unsuccessful situations. Specifically, SA mothers rated ability and task attributions more strongly than JA mothers in success situations. In unsuccessful situations, mothers rated child behavior as a cause when their children were 20 months of age more than when they were ve months of age. JA mothers' feelings of competence increased over time. SA mothers were more satisfied in the parenting role than JA mothers. Mothers' knowledge of parenting increased over time in both groups. Mothers' cultural cognitions were largely stable, as were JA mothers' parenting cognitions. The finding that parenting cognitions remained largely stable, despite major developmental changes in the child being parented, suggests that parenting beliefs may be adopted from the culture rather than formed on the job. The study provides insight into the differential influence of cultural background on the acculturation of cultural and parenting cognitions in two U.S. acculturating groups. In a second study, we explored prediction and coherence in cultural (acculturation, individualism, collectivism) and parenting cognitions (attributions, self-perceptions, knowledge) in JA and SA mothers. Mothers' cultural cognitions when their infants were five months old predicted some parenting cognitions 15 months later, particularly among JA mothers. Specifically, JA mothers' acculturation level positively predicted their knowledge of U.S. parenting norms, and their level of collectivism positively predicted their effort attributions and satisfaction with parenting. SA mothers' collectivism negatively predicted their parenting knowledge. Coherence among attributions both within and across parenting situations at both time periods and for both cultural groups suggests that the mothers possess attributional styles, with some mothers strongly looking for multiple reasons for their behavior and others less prone to look for reasons for their behavior, particularly among SA mothers. The study also found coherence among JA mothers' self-perceptions of parenting at both time periods, particularly with respect to competence and satisfaction, suggesting that these are important interrelated factors in JA mothers' perceptions of how they handle the parenting role, at least when their children are young. The study results showed few relations between mothers' attributions and their self-perceptions or knowledge at either five or 20 months, suggesting that attributions are relatively independent of self-perceptions and knowledge. Bornstein MH, Cote LR. Cultural and parenting cognitions in acculturating cultures: II. Patterns of prediction and structural coherence. J Cross-Cultural Psychol 2003;34:350-373. Bornstein MH, Cote LR. Maternal cognitions about parenting in cultures of origin, acculturating cultures, and cultures of destination. Child Dev; in press. Cote LR, Bornstein MH. Cultural and parenting cognitions in acculturating cultures: I. Cultural compari sons and developmental continuity and stability. J Cross-Cultural Psychol 2003;34:323-349. Infant and child development Bornstein, Mash; in collaboration with Arterberry The capacity to categorize objects, events, and other aspects of experience lies at the core of adaptive, intelligent behavior. In this context, categorization refers to the treatment of discriminable entities as equivalent in some way. Without this ability, every distinct encounter with the environment would demand a unique response, a demand that would quickly exceed human capability. When treating similar entities as equivalent, humans can store functionally relevant information about each entity in a unified manner instead of storing entities redundantly across each instance. Furthermore, accessing the representations that are associated with a given category can furnish information about completely novel entities as soon as those entities are categorized. Thus, categorization not only provides an economical manner in which to organize knowledge and skill but also allows us to extend that knowledge and skill beyond the limits of our own direct experience and consequently has far-reaching adaptive significance. Accumulated evidence now indicates that human infants are surprisingly capable of formulating and representing categories of visual information. We investigated variability in infants' categorization performance and potential sources of variability. Using data from 13 categorization studies employing a habituation-of-looking paradigm with infants three, five, six, and nine months of age, we developed a method for establishing a categorization criterion for use in classifying individual infants as “categorizers” for particular tasks and used logistic regression analyses to identify demographic and information-processing variables that predicted “categorizer” classification. Variables that increased the odds of classification as a categorizer were gender, number of habituation trials, and duration of peak look during habituation; total looking time during habituation decreased the odds of categorizer classification. Our findings have implications for individual differences in information processing. We investigated infants' categorization of animals and vehicles based on static versus dynamic attributes of stimuli. Six-month-olds categorized static color images of animals and vehicles and dynamic point-light displays showing only motions of the same animals and vehicles. In other experiments, three-, four-, six-, and nine-month-olds were tested in a habituation-transfer paradigm. Half the infants at each age were habituated to static images and tested with dynamic point-light displays; the other half were habituated to dynamic point-light displays and tested with static images. Six-month-olds did not transfer. Only nine-month-olds who were habituated to dynamic displays showed evidence of category transfer to static images. This study highlights age effects in categorization and the relative importance of static and dynamic stimulus information for categorization. Perceiving emotions correctly is foundational to the development of interpersonal skills. We tested five-month-old infants' abilities to recognize, discriminate, and categorize facial expressions of smiling. Infants were habituated to four degrees of smiling modeled by the same or different people; following habituation, infants were presented with a new degree of smile worn by the same and by a new person, a new degree of smile and a fearful expression worn by the same person, or a new degree of smile and a fearful expression worn by new people. Infants showed significant novelty preferences for the new person smiling and for the fearful expressions over the new degree of smiling. These findings indicate that infants at five months categorize the facial expression of smiling in static faces yet recognize the same person despite changes in facial expression; five months is the youngest age at which these categorization abilities have been demonstrated. The findings have significance for face processing in social interaction and infants' categorization of faces. We further examined categorization in young children using a sequential touching procedure. We assessed 12-, 18-, 24-, and 30-month-olds' categorization at superordinate, basic, and subordinate levels in four object domains (animals, vehicles, fruit, furniture) that contrasted living with nonliving objects and stationary with moving objects. Superordinate categorization was uniformly good across these ages; a basic level categorization emerged, rst for high perceptual contrasts and later for low perceptual contrasts; and subordinate categorization was uniformly absent across all ages. A developmental advantage for categorization of living things emerged. In another study, 20-month-olds' categorization was replicated and explored in greater depth in six object domains (animals, vehicles, fruit, furniture, tools, dishes). Domain sets also contrasted category level and relevant versus irrelevant perceptual features. Twenty-month-olds categorized at the superordinate and basic levels but not at the subordinate level; they categorized multiple superordinate domains; and they ignored irrelevant perceptual attribute information, such as size and color, when categorizing. Arterberry ME, Bornstein MH. Infant perceptual and conceptual categorization: the roles of static and dynamic stimulus attributes. Cognition: Int J Cogn Sci 2002;86:1-24. Arterberry ME, Bornstein MH. Variability and its sources in infant categorization. Infant Behav Dev 2002;25:515-528. Bornstein MH, Arterberry M. Recognition, discrimination, and categorization of smiling by 5-month- old infants. Dev Sci 2003; in press. Bornstein MH, Davidson L, Keyes CM, Moore K, The Center for Child Well-Being, eds. Well-being: Positive Development Across the Life Course. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. Lamb ME, Bornstein MH, Teti D. Development in Infancy: an Introduction (4ed). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002. COLLABORATORS Martha E. Arterberry, PhD, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg PA Giovanna Axia, PhD, University of Padua, Italy Hiroshi Azuma, PhD, Shirayuri College, Tokyo, Japan Sashi Bali, PhD, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya Charissa S.L. Cheah, PhD, University of Saskatchewan, Canada Annick de Houwer, PhD, University of Antwerp, Belgium Maria Lucia M. de Seidl, PhD, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Janet DiPietro, PhD, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD Celia Galperin, PhD, University of Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina Margaret Kabiru, PhD, Kenya Institute of Education, Nairobi, Kenya Kimjoo Kwak, PhD, Seoul National University, Korea Sharone Maital, PhD, University of Haifa, Israel A. Bame Nsamenang, PhD, The Institute of Human Sciences, Bamenda, Cameroon, West Africa Mechthild Papoušek, MD, Institut für Soziale Pädiatrie und Jugendmedizin, Universität München, Germany Seong-Yeon Park, PhD, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea Liliana Pascual, PhD, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina Marie-Germaine Pêcheux, PhD, CNRS, Paris, France Josette Ruel, MA, CNRS, Paris, France Avi Sagi, PhD, University of Haifa, Israel Alan Slater, PhD, University of Exeter, UK Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, PhD, New York University, NY Suedo Toda, PhD, Hokkaido University of Education, Japan Paola Venuti, PhD, Corso di Laurea in Psicologia, Seconda Università di Napoli, Italy Shirley Wyver, PhD, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia *Linda Cote, PhD, former Postdoctoral Fellow
For further information, contact bornstem@cfr.nichd.nih.gov |
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