Faculty Bibliography

The association between children's externalizing behavior problems and mothers' overreactive discipline was examined in a longitudinally assessed sample of toddlers and their mothers. Path analyses indicated that mothers' overreactive discipline and children's externalizing behaviors were significantly and similarly stable over a 2 1/2-year period. No evidence of a cross-time influence of either variable on the other was observed. Mothers' overreactive discipline at Time 2 had a significant effect on Time 2 externalizing behavior. No significant effects of children's behavior on mothers' discipline were found. Mothers' depressive symptomatology and marital discord predicted initial overreactivity and were related to externalizing problems through their relations to overreactivity. The results support the appropriateness of implementing parenting interventions for externalizing problems before age 2 years.

This study explored the factor structure of a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS; M. A. Straus, 1979) in a large multiethnic high school sample. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic approaches were used. Results generally supported 2-factor models for males and females. A substantial proportion of residual variance remained after the 2 primary factors were extracted, and correlations among this residual Variance suggested meaningful differences in the perpetration and experience of dating violence for males and females. Furthermore, the factor structure for males' self-reported victimization suggested that items representing psychological and mild physical aggression, which loaded on 1 factor, may be perceived similarly. Convergent validity analyses that examined the correlation among CTS traditional and factor scores with jealous actions,control tactics, and attitudes justifying males' and females' use of dating aggression provided initial support for the constructs identified. Results are discussed in terms of improving measurement of dating aggression.

To address the direction of causality underlying the robust association of mothers' attributions for child misbehavior and mothers' parenting, mothers' child-centered responsibility attributions for their hard-to-manage toddlers' misbehavior were experimentally manipulated. Mothers and children were then videotaped interacting in typical but challenging situations. Relative to mothers who were told that their children were not to blame for misbehaving, mothers who were told that their children would misbehave voluntarily and with negative intent were rated as significantly more overreactive in their discipline and felt angrier; their children exhibited higher rates of negative affect. Therefore, mothers' attributions for children's misbehavior can determine the harshness of their discipline. Further research on attribution-focused interventions and their role in facilitating treatment response and maintenance in parenting programs is warranted.

A model of the development and maintenance of overreactive and lax parental discipline styles was tested in a sample of 40 mothers of toddlers by assessing mothers' arousal to and attributions for videotaped scenes of children expressing negative affect and by examining these data in relation to self-reported parenting style. The dysfunctionality of mothers' child-centered attributions for the child negative affect accounted for a significant portion of the variance in mothers' emotional arousal and their overreactive/harsh parenting. However, the dysfunctionality of mothers' mother-centered attributions did not account for a significant portion of the variance in mothers' lax parenting. These findings suggest that emotions and cognitions play important roles in maintaining overreactive or harsh parenting. Interventions aimed at altering parenting behavior may be more effective if they address emotional arousal and attributions as well as teach appropriate parenting strategies.