Child's Actual Behavior Research Articles

Social Skills and Reciprocal Behavior with a Virtual Player Among Children With and Without SLD/ADHD.

The study aimed to compare reciprocal behavior during interaction with a virtual-player in a computer game between children with typical development (TD) and children with specific-learning-disabilities (SLD) and/or with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and to examine its correlation with social skills. A total of 120 children (43 SLD/ADHD, 77 TD) aged 9-11years participated. Participants completed self-reported questionnaires focusing on social skills and reciprocity and played a computer game in which such social situations arose. Results indicated no difference between the groups in self-reported social skills or reciprocity. However, the children's actual reciprocal behavior during gameplay revealed different results: the SLD/ADHD group exhibited higher levels of selfish (helping others for personal gain) and lower levels of altruistic reciprocity (helping others for their benefit) compared to the TD group. Furthermore, a correlation was found between self-reported social skills and reciprocity, as well as with the reciprocal-patterns observed in the gameplay.

Association of parental social support with energy balance-related behaviors in low-income and ethnically diverse children: a cross-sectional study.

BackgroundParents play an important role in providing their children with social support for healthy eating and physical activity. However, different types of social support (e.g., instrumental, emotional, modeling, rules) might have different results on children’s actual behavior. The purpose of this study was to assess the association of the different types of social support with children’s physical activity and eating behaviors, as well as to examine whether these associations differ across racial/ethnic groups.MethodsWe surveyed 1169 low-income, ethnically diverse third graders and their caregivers to assess how children’s physical activity and eating behaviors (fruit and vegetable and sugar-sweetened beverage intake) were associated with instrumental social support, emotional social support, modeling, rules and availability of certain foods in the home. We used sequential linear regression to test the association of parental social support with a child’s physical activity and eating behaviors, adjusting for covariates, and then stratified to assess the differences in this association between racial/ethnic groups.ResultsParental social support and covariates explained 9–13% of the variance in children’s energy balance-related behaviors. Family food culture was significantly associated with fruit and vegetable and sugar-sweetened beverage intake, with availability of sugar-sweetened beverages in the home also associated with sugar-sweetened beverage intake. Instrumental and emotional support for physical activity were significantly associated with the child’s physical activity. Results indicate that the association of various types of social support with children’s physical activity and eating behaviors differ across racial/ethnic groups.ConclusionsThese results provide considerations for future interventions that aim to enhance parental support to improve children’s energy balance-related behaviors.

Students’ Social and Emotional Competence Promoting Positive Social Relationships and Skills

The current study examined causal relationships between social and emotional competence and social relationships and skills in the classroom. Participants were 2,410 third- to ninth-grade students and they responded to the scales of social and emotional competence (SEC), self-esteem, and normative behavior. The classroom teachers rated their normative behavior in the classes. The results indicated that perceived SEC has influences on children's actual normative behavior through self-esteem and perceived normative behavior, and that self-esteem partly mediates the cause-and-effect process between perceived SEC and perceived normative behavior. The same causal structure was found among both elementary school students (third to sixth grades) and junior high school students (seventh to ninth grades), with age-related differences in some path coefficients. The findings support that SEC enhancement by social and emotional learning brings positive outcomes in students' perception and social relationships and skills.

Relationship between children's performance-based motor skills and child, parent, and teacher perceptions of children's motor abilities using self/informant-report questionnaires.

Occupational therapists often assess the motor skill performance of children referred to them as part of the assessment process. This study investigated whether children's, parents' and teachers' perceptions of children's motor skills using valid and reliable self/informant-report questionnaires were associated with and predictive of children's actual motor performance, as measured by a standardised performance-based motor skill assessment. Fifty-five typically developing children (8-12 years of age), their parents and classroom teachers were recruited to participate in the study. The children completed the Physical Self-Description Questionnaire (PSDQ) and the Self-Perception Profile for Children. The parents completed the Developmental Profile III (DP-III) and the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire, whereas the teachers completed the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire and the Teacher's Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior. Children's motor performance composite scores were determined using the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Second Edition (BOT-2). Spearman's rho correlation coefficients were calculated to identify if significant correlations existed and multiple linear regression was used to identify whether self/informant report data were significant predictors of children's motor skill performance. The child self-report scores had the largest number of significant correlations with the BOT-2 composites. Regression analysis found that the parent report DP-III Physical subscale was a significant predictor of the BOT-2 Manual Coordination composite and the child-report questionnaire PSDQ. Endurance subscale was a significant predictor of the BOT-2 Strength and Agility composite. The findings support the use of top-down assessment methods from a variety of sources when evaluating children's motor abilities.

The Positive Illusory Bias: Do Inflated Self-Perceptions in Children with ADHD Generalize to Perceptions of Others?

This study examined whether children with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) demonstrate positive illusory perceptions of their own competence and others' competence. Participants (67 children with ADHD symptoms; 40 non-ADHD children) completed the Self-Perception Profile for Children and rated actors' competence in videos clips where inconsistent cues of performance had to be integrated in order to determine the actor's competence. Teachers completed the Teacher Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior. Children with ADHD symptoms overestimated their own competence relative to teachers' estimates in all domains significantly more than non-ADHD children. There were no significant group differences in perceptions of others' competence. Findings suggest that positive illusions are exclusive to perceptions of self and do not extend to perceptions of others.

A Study on the Role of Advertisements in Instigating Pester Power in Children

The advertisements have a direct bearing on the socio-cultural,"m::*:li: academic, and psychological framework of the children. Constant watching of 1V programs and commercials affect child's social behavior. Behavior is referred to the way the child conducts oneself in his/ her social surroundings. Behavioral impact affects not only the child but also the associates and the environment of child's life, mainly comprising of the family, the school and the neighborhood friend, in terms of the shocks experienced by them. The study delves into identifying the impact of advertising on the social setup of child's world. The best way to understand the child's behavior is to look into the child's family and the social circle it is associated with The parent's responses and their opinions, give a true representation of the child's actual behavior. Hence the parents of the respondent children form a focal point of this study

Assessing the Factorial Invariance of Harter's Self-Concept Measures: Comparing Preadolescents With and Without Spina Bifida Using Child, Parent, and Teacher Report

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the structure of children's self-concept, as rated by children themselves on the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC; Harter, 1985), and the structure of children's competence, as rated by their parents on the Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior (PRS) and teachers on the Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior (TRS; Harter, 1985), are similar across samples of children with and without spina bifida (children were 8 and 9 years of age; n = 68 in each sample). Using confirmatory factor analyses, results revealed that a multidimensional model for the SPPC and the TRS fit the data well for both samples. On the other hand, the model for both mothers' and fathers' PRS ratings did not fit the data for the spina bifida sample. Further tests of factorial invariance conducted on the SPPC and TRS revealed that the spina bifida and able-bodied samples tended to have the same pattern and magnitude of factor loadings for both instruments. There was some invariance, however, in the amount of unique error variance accounted for across samples. These results bolster our confidence in using the SPPC and TRS to compare children with and without spina bifida.

L'Ajustement Psychosocial à L'Asthme Et Au Diabète Juvénile Chez Des Enfants D'âge Scolaire

The main purpose of this study was to compare psychological and social problems among chronically ill school-aged children to those observed in a group of healthy children of the same age. On the basis of the data collected, it was also possible to compare self-perception and social functioning problems between the 2 groups of children, as well as to identify the contributing factors explaining the observed differences in psychosocial adaptation between these 2 groups. Three measures were used to assess psychological and social problems. Mental health problems were measured by the Dominique (Valla, Bergeron, Bérubé, Gaudet, & Saint-Georges, 1994). Self-Perception and Social Functioning were assessed by the Self-Perception Profile (Harter, 1985) and the Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior (Harter, 1985). Information on characteristics of the child and his or her family was also collected. Sixty children aged 6 to 11 and diagnosed as having juvenile diabetes or asthma, 59 control children, and the children's parents participated in this study. A chi-square test and multivariate analysis of variance were used to compare the 2 groups of children. Results indicate that children with diabetes and asthma do not present more psychological and social problems than other children of the same age. Results also suggest that age is the only variable indicating a higher proportion of mental health problems among chronically ill children. Results are discussed and compared to those of previous studies from which the conceptual frame-work of this study was developed.

Fear and exhilaration in response to risk: An extension of a model of injury risk in a real-world context

This paper explored a model that predicted children's actual injury risk behavior from their current typical reported reactions of excitement versus fear in risky play situations. Fourth-grade children were asked to report on their current typical levels of fear and excitement in response to common play situations, including those involving play in the water. A week or more later, the same children were observed during their turn at free play on the diving board of a local swimming pool. Reporting that current responses to risky play situations resulted in fear was related to lower rates of actual risky behavior and higher rates of protective behavior, whereas reporting current responses of exhilaration to risky situations was related to higher rates of some kinds of actual risky behavior. These relationships were even stronger when only water-related play situations were considered. The data are consistent with findings from observed behavior where the risk was academic, social, or sportsrelated failure rather than injury. Further, this is the first study to document that children's perceptions of their own current cognitive reactions to risky play situations predict their actual concurrent risky behavior in a potential physical injury situation. Thus, these findings suggest an important tool for future prevention programs.

Structure and validity of parent and teacher perceptions of children's competence: A multitrait–multimethod–multigroup investigation.

Parents and teachers completed their respective versions of S. Harter's (1985b) Rating Scale of Children's Actual Behavior to assess 5 domains of competence in 321 3rd- and 403 6th-grade children. Peers completed a peer nomination index of multiple competencies. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed 5 factors in both the teacher and parent scales: Academic Competence, Social Acceptance, Athletic Competence, Physical Appearance, and Behavioral Conduct. Two higher order factors also emerged: a Well-Behaved/Good Student factor and an Athletic/Attractive/Popular factor. All 5 subscales of the teacher and parent scales manifested a high degree of discriminant validity. Significant levels of convergent validity emerged for most of these subscales.

Ecosystem Adversity as Setting Factors in Mothers' Judgment of Child Behavior and Indiscriminate Mothering

Several studies have shown that troubled mothers are not accurate observers of their children's behavior. These mothers have a global and usually blame-oriented reporting style coloured by disphoric views of social isolation, social coercion and socioeconomic disadvantage. The dsyphoric view describes a number of contextual or setting factors that seem to influence a mother's observational reports about her child more than the child's actual behavior does. Of course, when this observational bias exists, the mother's parenting performance is bound to be comprised. According to the considerations above, this study was designed with a group of 21 mother-child dyads characterized by their coercive interactions and child abuse (physical and emotional). The children were school-aged children ranging from 4 to 14 years of age and all mother-child dyads were observed at home. Two sets of analyses were conducted, one related to the maternal perception and one related to maternal behavior. The maternal judgment of the child's externalizing behavior problems throughout the CBCL.E and of the child's deviant behavior through the dayly scale rating constitued the criterion variables for the maternal perception analyses. The indiscriminate maternal reaction to child prosocial behavior was the criterion for the second set of analyses. Ecosystem variables and observational measures were taken as the predictors. The findings suggest that the role played by the child's deviant behavior as predictor is very important in the mother's specific report, the mother's rating of her child's behavior during the previous hour. However, the best predictors of the mother's global judgment were both her actual aversive behavior and the setting factor as well as the perceived quality of social contacts. Likewise, with regard to the maternal behavior predictions, the results indicate that ecosystem factors and maternal judgment predicted the mother's indiscriminate behavior following her child's prosocial behavior. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Maternal reports of child behavior problems and personal distress as predictors of dysfunctional parenting

AbstractA community sample of 96 mother-child dyads participated in a study evaluating the extent to which directly observed differences in maternal parenting behavior could be predicted on the basis of both global and proximal maternal reports of child behavior problems and personal distress. To allow for simultaneous testing of a set of relations and make tentative causal inferences, a structural equation modeling approach was used. When the analysis was conducted on the entire sample, results indicated that global and to a lesser extent proximal measures of child behavior problems and personal distress made modest contributions to dysfunctional parenting, with neither child behavior problems or personal distress playing a more important role than the other. When the sample was divided into low (n = 54) and high (n = 42) socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) families, a different picture emerged. In low disadvantage families, parenting was most strongly predicted by mothers' proximal reports of their children's behavior; whereas in high disadvantage families, parenting was best predicted by mothers' proximal reports of their own personal distress. Results are interpreted in light of Wahler and Dumas' (1989) attentional hypothesis. It suggests that mothers who do not experience chronic sources of distress (such as SED) attend and respond to their children's behavior in a fairl accurate and consistent manner, but that mothers who experience chronic distress are unable to attend effectively to their children, responding to them often in light of the many stressors to which they are exposed, rather than in light of the children's actual behavior.

Teacher Evaluation Bias toward LD Children-Attenuating Effects of the Classroom Ecology

The present study investigated whether classroom context cues in videotapes showing a nonhandicapped and an LD expectancy would attenuate teacher evaluation bias. Participants were 80 elementary-school teachers who were randomly divided between a nonhandicapped and an LD expectancy. The teachers completed a rating scale on a child's behavior before and after viewing a videotape of children engaged in individual seatwork or group instruction. Results showed that at pretest the teachers' ratings differed according to the assigned label. After viewing the videotape, the teachers rated the two expectancy groups as not differing significantly. However, the teachers rated the child's behavior during group instruction as less appropriate concurring with the child's actual behavior. The findings suggest that teachers hold initial biases about the behavior of LD and normal children, but take into account the classroom context when rating actual behavior.

Factors associated with parent labeling of children referred for conduct problems.

Clinicians have suggested that in some cases normal children have been inappropriately labeled as deviant by their parents and taken to psychological clinics for treatment. Reasons given for such inappropriate labeling have included factors such as the parents' marital distress and intolerance of normal child behavior. This study provided an empirical examination of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of parent labeling of 5--12-year-old children referred by their parents for treatment of conduct problems. The definition of inappropriate labeling derived by the present investigators required that the relationship between the child's actual behavior and the parent's negative label be so imperfect as to raise questions about the justification for the label, and that some identifiable factors other than the child's behavior account for the negative label. Three parent factors evaluated for their contribution to the parent negative label were martial distress, parent negative behavior toward the child, and parent distress about child deviant behavior. The statistical model of hierarchical multiple regression permitted analysis of this definition. The association found between observed child deviant behavior and the parent negative label suggested that parents of this sample perceived their children reasonably accurately. The three parent factors were found to be negligibly related to the parent label. Therefore, the conditions for inappropriate labeling of the children by the parents of this sample were not met.

Qestionnaires for measurement of temperament in one- and two-year-old children: development and standardization.

SUMMARYParental questionnaires were developed for measurement of temperament in one‐ and two‐year‐old children. Nine temperament dimensions, previously studied in the New York Longitudinal Study, were represented here by questions concerning the children's actual behavior in everyday activities and specified situations. The questionnaires consist of 55 and 50 questions, respectively, and each takes approximately 15 minutes to complete and five minutes to sore. With a few exceptions, test‐retest reliabilities were found to be generally satisfactory. A representative sample of children originally chosen from Swedish Well‐Baby clinics constituted the standardization sample and was studied at about one year of age (N= 151) and at about two years of age (N= 149), For both questionnaires, the sample's scores on the variables showed acceptable ranges and distributions, providing good differentiation among individual children with respect to temperament characteristics. At one year, only one statistically significant sex difference was found among the nine variables, girls being less Adaptable than boys. No significant differences in temperament were found between the sexes at two years of age.

A comparison of perceived and actual dental needs of a select group of children in Texas

Dental caries (DMFS) evaluations were made for 150 children in Grades 2 to 7. Three months later, a trained interviewer questioned 120 children from 100 families to determine atitudes toward oral hygiene and dental health on the part of (a) the child, (b) the parent, along with (c) the child's perception of the parent's attitude, and (d) the parent's perception of the child's attitude. Evaluation of the perceived attitudes toward oral hygiene revealed a statistically significant correlation between the child's attitude and the degree of dental health as well as between the attitudes of child and parent. Conclusions were: (1) parents were not accurate in their perception of the dental health habits of their children, (2) children were not performing acceptable routine oral hygiene procedures, (3) children accurately perceived the attitudes of their parents toward dental health, and (4) children's actual dental health behavior as manifested by dental health status was related to the attitudes of their parents.

The Relationship Between Child's SES and Teacher Expectations: A Test of the Middle-Class Bias Hypothesis

The purpose of this study was to assess the degree to which teachers' expectations are related to children's social class characteristics. A sample of 96 elementary school teachers drawn from four schools serving lowerand middle-upper class neighborhoods was asked to judge the performance potential and related characteristics, including the SES background, of a set of photographs of both black and white grade school children. While expectations were found to be positively and significantly related to perceived SES of the children in the photos, variations by school SES and number of years teaching experience in the mean number of judgments made suggest that teachers' class bias operates in a more complex manner than is usually thought. In addition, teachers were found to respond more often when choosing children for success than for failure categories. Regardless of perceived SES, white children were more often expected to succeed in school than black children. Recently, Rosenthal (1973) and Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) presented data supporting the hypothesis that a teacher's expectations of a child greatly influence the child's actual behavior. (Students of whom teachers were led to expect exceptional performance were found generally to live up to the expectations.) They speculated that the artificially created positive expectations the teachers had for certain children in their classes caused them to be more warmly encouraging; to give more feedback; to teach more effectively; and to ask more of these chosen few. Thus the teachers were transmitting high expectations to children who behaved accordingly. Though not directly tested in their study, there is the implied corollary that the teacher who expects poor performance of a child may also communicate this expectancy through her attitudes and interactions with the child, and the child will perform poorly. Since the initial publication, Rosenthal and Jacobson's study has been attacked on points of methodology, procedure, and analysis, and has been criticized as being unreproducible (cf. Barber and Silver, 1968; Elashoff and Snow, 1971; Fleming and Anttonen, 1971). Nonetheless, the hypothesized relationship between expectations and behavior remains convincing, so much so that in some circles it seems to have become a basic tenet in the social psychology of the classroom, no doubt owing in large part to the considerable popularization of the Pygmalion study. (See the book review by Snow, 1969, on the uncritical acceptance and popularization of the study; and Johnson, 1970, especially pp. 141-52.) Furthermore, it is widely assumed that teachers develop expectations about their students on the basis of perceived SES of