Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Parental Socialization Of General And Domain-Specific Self-Control In Adolescents, Matty Johnston

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Adolescent self-control appears to be an important competency to develop. It has pervasive links with various outcomes (e.g., educational, financial, and interpersonal) both during adolescence and into adulthood (Allemand et al., 2019, Moffitt et al., 2011). Adolescents often report lower self-control compared to adults, although individual levels of self-control vary widely between adolescents (Allemand et al., 2019, Romer et al., 2010). Despite its importance, very little is known about how self-control develops. Thus, the current study aims to examine the relationship between parents’ self-control and that of their teen children. To further understand how adolescents' self-control may be socialized by …

Examining The Impacts Of A Relational Savoring Intervention On Parental Reflective Functioning And Children’S Emotion Regulation Across Time, Megan Blackard

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The ability to regulate emotions is an important competency that enables goal attainment and maintenance of satisfying interpersonal relationships throughout life. Key to the development of healthy emotion regulation is the sensitivity of the caregiver. One internal mechanism underlying parents’ ability to be sensitive is parental reflective functioning, the ability to understand a child as having a complex inner world of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that serve as the basis for the child’s behaviors. Strong parental reflective functioning allows parents to understand the needs behind children’s behavior and respond sensitively to meet those needs. The sensitive parenting that depends on …

Childhood Irritability: A Developmental Psychopathology Perspective, Ola Mohamed Ali

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Irritability, defined as a low threshold for anger, is a transdiagnostic feature of diverse forms of psychopathology and a rapidly growing literature implicates it in child maladaptation. Existing literature has focused on characterizing irritability in children with psychopathology, using conceptualizations and methods designed to assess more severely maladaptive behavior, usually via parent report. However, emerging work suggests that, even in the absence of dysfunction, normative variations in irritability are associated with increased risk for disorder, suggesting that irritability in childhood is a quantitatively distributed trait that covaries with vulnerability to psychopathology. Additionally, parent-report methods may be subject to an array …

The Effect Of The Degree Of Authoritative Parenting On Adolescents' Adjustment To College, Elizabeth Smith

Senior Theses

This research aimed to explore how parenting style relates to college students’ adjustment in the first month of college. Authoritative parenting is marked by a standard of maintaining some control, while also promoting children’s autonomy. Previous research has found that authoritative parenting is positively associated with adolescent behavior that is more socially responsible, self-reliant, cheerful, and cooperative. Furthermore, the more support and independence that parents encourage, will in turn breed confidence and academic persistence in adolescent years. I will expand on this research by evaluating whether parenting style also relates to adjustment and mental health outcomes among first year college …

The Mediating Roles Of Maternal Psychological Distress And Parenting On The Association Between Intimate Partner Violence And Adolescent Delinquent Behavior, Sophie K. Zolinski

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) impacts one in four women in their lifetime, with the reported violence most commonly occurring around childbearing age. Unfortunately, children and adolescents are often unintended victims of IPV, and years of evidence suggest a strong link between maternal IPV and a host of negative adolescent outcomes, including a greater likelihood of engaging in delinquent behavior. Given the negative outcomes linked to adolescent delinquency, the field has been interested in identifying factors that contribute to the association between maternal experiences of IPV and adolescent delinquent behavior, such as the influence of maternal psychological distress and parenting. Many …

Examining The Impact Of Attachment And Parent Socialization Of Emotion In Childhood On Emotion Regulation In Maltreated Adults, Nikki Major

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Objectives: The aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between child maltreatment and adult emotion regulation by examining parenting processes of emotion socialization and attachment security as possible mechanisms accounting for this relationship. It was hypothesized that maltreated adults would retrospectively report more unsupportive responses from parents/caregivers, greater attachment insecurity, more difficulty with emotion regulation, and using expressive suppression more than cognitive reappraisal. It was also hypothesized that unsupportive responses to emotions and attachment security would both indirectly effect the relationship between child maltreatment and adult emotion dysregulation.

Method: A sample of 226 participants from Amazon Mechanical …

Coparenting Quality In Separated American Parents Of Children Ages 1½ To 5: Anxiety, Social Support, Self-Efficacy, And The Associations With Coparenting And Child Outcomes, Greg Kovacs

Dissertations - ALL

The purpose of this research was to examine the mechanisms determining coparenting processes in parents following divorce or separation and the implications for the emotional and behavioral outcomes for their young children. The complex associations between parental anxiety, parental self-efficacy, social support, coparent relationship quality, and child problem behaviors were examined. Participants were recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk and completed a survey regarding their coparenting dynamics. The sample consisted of 322 residents of the United States who had a child between 18 months and 5 years of age and who were no longer living with the child's other parent. Results …

The Effects Of Parenting On The Behavior Of Children With Autism: A Meta-Analysis, Allison Martin

Honors Theses

Parenting impacts a child’s behavior, mental health, social relationships, cognitive development, and more. However, research has shown that parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) express more negative behaviors such as being overly controlling, hostile towards the child, and having poor communication with the child when compared to parents of typically developing children (Ku et al., 2019). The current study examines the effects of positive and negative parenting behaviors on the internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors, and social skills of children with ASD. A meta-analysis was done to analyze the effects of parenting behaviors on children with ASD. Twenty-one studies …

Let Go And Let Grow: An Assessment Of A School And Community-Based Intervention Encouraging Independence In Children, Mary Elsharouny

Selected Full Text Dissertations, 2011-

Overinvolved parenting is on the rise, despite its association with negative outcomes for children (Twenge, 2017; American Psychological Association (APA), 2019; Segrin et al., 2013). Its emerging counterpart, free-range parenting, urges parents to offer their children more independence and less supervision (Skenazy, 2009). However, no quantitative, peer-reviewed research has been conducted on the effects of independent task engagement on children’s independence and resilience. The present study evaluated the effects of The Let Grow Project (Skenazy, 2018), a school-based intervention aimed at increasing resilience and independence in children by assigning homework to engage in tasks independently. Children completed measures of independence, …

The Impact Of Parent Training On Epigenetic Age Acceleration In Disadvantaged Children, Alexandra Sullivan

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Early adversity exposure impacts many children annually, putting them at risk of prospective health problems. This study tests whether participating in a behavioral parent training intervention predicts differences in a biomarker predictive of health outcomes, epigenetic age acceleration, in a sample of majority Latinx three-year-old children (n = 62) with developmental delay and elevated behavioral problems. Participation in the parenting intervention was unrelated to a) between-group differences in epigenetic age acceleration at follow-up and b) differences in within-group change from baseline to follow-up. However, some evidence suggested the presence of an effect of parent training on decreased epigenetic age acceleration …

Longitudinal Dynamics Between Parenting And Adolescent Deviance: Direct Links And Underlying Mechanisms, Dan Liu

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

The current dissertation, based on three separate and yet closely related studies, tested the longitudinal dynamic relationships of maternal and paternal parenting factors with adolescent deviance, the direct links as well as underlying mechanisms. Study 1, based on longitudinal data collected from 570 early adolescents, part of the Brno Longitudinal Study of Youth (BLSY), used latent growth modeling and tested the development of three parenting measures, including parental solicitation, knowledge, and peer approval, and deviance during early adolescence, as well as the developmental (i.e., growth to growth) links of these three parenting measures with adolescent deviance over time. Results indicated …

Parenting And Children's Academic Coping As A Dynamic System: Feedforward, Feedback, And Mediators Of Changes Across The School Year, Kristen Elizabeth Raine

Dissertations and Theses

Using a motivational framework based in self-determination theory, the present study investigated the dynamic system between parenting and children's coping, defined as the ways they handle the everyday difficulties they encounter in school, using a sample of 1,020 students in grades three through six drawn from a larger cohort-sequential study. Three overarching research questions were examined using multiple regression that concerned 1) feedforward effects from parents' initial provision of motivational support (i.e., involvement, structure, and autonomy support) to changes in children's academic coping across the school year, 2) feedback effects from children's initial coping to changes in the same parenting …

Oppositional Behavior Parallels In Toddlers And Teens And Parent’S Response, Michele Dimmett

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Parents seem to manage oppositional conduct of toddlers but struggle emotionally and physically with oppositional conduct of teenagers, despite similarities in the behaviors. Self-efficacy theory, psychological theory of development, and theory of mind guided the conceptualization of how parents perceive and respond to these two sensitive periods of development. This contrasted group quantitative study pursued measurable similarities in the experience of first-time parents of children aged 18-36 months and 14-15 years of age. Establishing parents’ confidence level in their parenting skills and how they perceive and respond to their child's oppositional behavior was also a factor. One hundred and seventy-five …

Associations Between Adolescent Aggressive Behavior Problems With Distinct Parental Monitoring And Parental Knowledge : Mothering Versus Fathering, Panpan Yang

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Research with a focus on adolescent aggression often measures parental monitoring and parental knowledge interchangeably. However, parental monitoring refers to parent-driven behaviors that are related but distinct from parental knowledge. Mixed measures of parental monitoring and parental knowledge may lead to misunderstanding about how these parenting behaviors are related to adolescent aggression. This study aims to uncover the possible unique associations between adolescent aggression and parental monitoring as well as parental knowledge by 1) distinguishing the measure of parental monitoring from the measure of parental knowledge and 2) simultaneously controlling for these two dimensions of parenting with each other. Five-wave …

A Moderated-Mediation Model Of Emerging Adult And Parent Religiosity, Externalizing Behavior, And Parenting Style, Benjamin M. Simonds

Honors Projects

The present study investigated whether emerging adult religiosity mediated the relationship between high parental religiosity and low levels of offspring externalizing, and whether these pathways are moderated by aspects of authoritative parenting (i.e., acceptance, firm control, and psychological autonomy). Surveys were completed by 275 emerging adults aged 18-25, including scales assessing their religiosity, the religiosity of their parents, the style of parenting in which they were raised, and their own engagement in externalizing behaviors. Results indicated a correlation between high levels of parental and emerging adult religiosity, and a marginal relationship between high parental religiosity and reduced offspring externalizing. However, …

Predictors Of Courage In Adolescents, Yea Won Park

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Adolescence can be a difficult phase of life. Adolescents may experience drastic physical, psychological, social changes, which can lead to uncertainty and anxiety. Courage is an important construct to study because it could help adolescents carry out tasks, work more effectively, and pursue goals (Koerner, 2014). Few studies have investigated predictors of general courage (e.g., personality; Muris et al., 2009), and moral courage (i.e., parenting, gender; Bronstein et al., 2009). The present study examined intrapersonal and interpersonal predictors (Time 1) of courage (Time 3) among adolescents, as well as potential mediating and moderating mechanisms. Data were collected from a larger …

Longitudinal And Concurrent Contributions Of Verbal And Physical Scaffolding To Toddlers’ Inhibitory Control, Anton Petrenko

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Executive function (EF) is crucial to lifespan development and environmental factors have been found to impact its development. Previous research has shown that parenting can make meaningful impacts on children’s EF, with scaffolding receiving broad support. Scaffolding refers to an adult’s ability to guide a child through a challenging task without providing too much or too little support. However, many of the studies which have examined scaffolding have been done in preschool- and school-aged samples, with limited research conducted in younger samples. Very few studies have separately examined verbal and physical components of scaffolding, which may differentially contribute to children’s …

Investigating The Use Of Mental-State Talk In Parent-Child Joint Reminiscing And Storytelling On Children’S Source Monitoring, Holly Autumn Nelson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Source monitoring is the process of identifying and analyzing sources of information (Johnson et al., 1993). The ability to monitor source improves with age which places children at a greater risk for blending and misattributing information from different sources. Experiencing source confusions has academic, legal, and social implications, and thus understanding how source monitoring develops is important. Research exploring factors that impact source monitoring have predominantly focused on maturational aspects such as at which ages children learn to monitor source and neurological factors such as executive functioning. However, the impact of age and executive functioning may vary across the type …

Analysis Of Mothers’ Parenting Consistency: Associations With Children’S Adjustment, David R L Brabham

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

While robust literature exists on the association between positive and negative parenting with child outcomes, less is known about the nature of parenting’s consistency in this relationship. This study sought to examine the relationship between valence and consistency of parenting, and to determine whether consistency is associated with child adjustment independent of valence. Data were collected from 167 mothers and their toddler-aged child. Participation involved two time points, 1 year apart. At each time point, mothers’ observational data were obtained via videotape of designed interactions between mother and toddler, as well as survey data from mothers. Bivariate correlations and multiple …

Families In Poverty: Additive And Qualitative Influence Of Risk On Parenting, Lauren Aaron

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Co-occurrence of risk for impoverished families is common, but less is known about how compounded risk influences parenting behavior. Mothers (n = 167) and their two-year-old children were visited at home and engaged in a game aimed to elicit everyday parenting behavior. Mothers endorsed experience of sociodemographic and psychosocial risks. Two unique cumulative risk indices were created from these variables. Regression analyses assessed the relation between the risk indices and positive and negative parenting behavior. Latent class analysis examines classes of risk experience on the same indicators. Results show psychosocial risk experience is associated with both parenting factors, while …

Relations Between Executive Function And Parenting Behavior, Robin Alexandra Riddick

Honors Theses

Past research focused on how harsh parenting related to EF and behavior problems in children when other factors (i.e., maternal stress, household chaos, socioeconomic risk factors) were present. However, the literature was lacking in the examination of the relationship between EF and other parenting styles. This study aimed to examine the relationship between different aspects of executive function and regulation (i.e, inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility, problem solving, and impulsivity) and parenting and routines (i.e., laxness, hostility, overreactivity, and sleep and routines). To study this, parents of 18 to 24 month olds were administered a battery of EF tasks and …

An Examination Of Quantity And Quality Of Maternal Consulting Predicting Adolescents' Socio-Emotional Outcomes, Natalie Low

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This observational investigation had two aims. The first aim examined the independent associations of the quantity and quality of maternal consulting and early adolescents’ socio-emotional outcomes. The second aim assessed the moderation effect of the quality of maternal consulting on the relationship between the quantity of maternal consulting and early adolescents’ outcomes. Seventy early adolescents (Mage=12.39 years old) and their mothers participated in the study. The sample was 51.4% girls and 48.6% boys. Mothers and their early adolescents were video recorded discussing typical hypothetical peer-related situations. Conversations were coded for the amount of consulting and four aspects of quality: feasibility, …

Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia, Behavioral Inhibition/Activation, And Behavioral Response To A Distressed Infant Simulator In Emerging Adults, Erin R. Mckay

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Caregiver sensitivity and intrusiveness during infancy are predictive of the development of self-regulation, joint-attention, and cognitive ability. However, few studies have examined predictors of caregiver responses to infant distress. Of particular note is vagal tone, specifically respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a physiological measure of top-down self-regulation. Previous work has identified a relationship between RSA, as well as other measures of caregiver self-regulation, with caregiver sensitivity and intrusiveness. The current study also examined additional predictors of caregiver responsiveness, behavioral inhibition and activation, which was conceptualized as a bottom-up system of self-regulation due to its influence on motivation and personality. It was …

Parental Supervision And Monitoring And Deviant Adolescent Behavior, Mary Catherine Ross-Gray

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Deviant adolescent behavior is a social crisis in the United States, estimated at an annual cost of over $4 billion; yet there are gaps in the research on parental influences regarding this behavior. In this study, the principles of social learning theory were used to examine the relationships between parental supervision and deviant adolescent behavior as moderated by self-control and socioeconomic status. The population for this quantitative study consisted of 87 parent volunteers who completed surveys measuring parent supervision, child executive functioning, and delinquent behavior as well as demographic information such as socioeconomic status. Multiple Regression/Correlation was used to examine …

Adolescents’ Interpretations Of Parental Psychological Control: The Role Of Beliefs And Disapproval On Problematic Outcomes, Katelyn F. Romm

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Parental psychological control has consistently been found to be associated with problematic outcomes among adolescents, including substance use (Galambos, Barker, & Almeida, 2003), risky cyber behaviors (Li, Li, & Newman, 2013), problematic eating behaviors (Soenens et al., 2008), and depressive symptoms (Romm & Metzger, 2018). However, few studies have examined how adolescents reason about and react to psychological control. Recent research has suggested that adolescents vary in their beliefs about parental motivations for using psychological control, as well as their level of disapproval of psychological control (Camras et al., 2012; Kakihara & Tilton-Weaver, 2009). These cognitive factors (i.e., beliefs about …

The Role Of Racial Discrimination On Parental Emotion And Racial Socialization, Tyia K. Wilson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This study was the first to examine whether African American parents’ past experiences with racism and discrimination influence parents’ emotional and racial socialization practices. Additionally, this study investigated whether parental beliefs about their child’s positive and negative emotions mediated the relationship between racial discrimination and emotion socialization behaviors. Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 406 African American parents recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Using structural equation models, the study found significant association between racial discrimination and parents’ racial and emotion socialization behaviors. Furthermore, significant meditation effects were found such that racial discrimination was associated with emotional beliefs which …

The Role Of Temperamental Fear And Parenting Quality On Emerging Internalizing And Externalizing Problems During Early Childhood, Tejal Patel

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Temperamental characteristics may distinguish which children are at greater risk for later psychopathology. In addition, parenting quality may interact with the association between temperament and behavior problems to increase or decrease externalizing or internalizing behaviors in children. This study examined whether mothers’ parenting quality moderated the associations between children’s temperamental fear and children’s behavior problems. The sample consisted of 143 low-income mother-child dyads who participated in various interactional tasks designed to measure mothers’ parenting and children’s temperamental fear. While children’s fearless and fearful temperament were not significantly associated with externalizing and internalizing behaviors, respectively, some significant associations emerged. Positive and …

The Experience Of Childhood Maltreatment And Its Impact On Parenting In A High-Risk Sample, Alex C. Clement

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Protective Role Of Parenting Behaviors In The Development Of African American Adolescents, Kelsey Johanna Sala-Hamrick

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation aimed to understand how African American parents protect their teens from developing psychopathology in the face of extreme adversity. To do this, I examined three dimensions of parenting behavior, stress exposure, and behavior problems in order to understand the direct and moderating relations between parenting behaviors, cumulative stress and youth internalizing, externalizing, and total psychological problems. 150 African American primary caregivers reported on their adolescent children’s internalizing, externalizing and total behavior problems, exposure to stressful events, and their own parenting behavior. 150 inner-city African American adolescents reported on their exposure to traumatic stressors and a subsample of 43 …

The Structure Of Parent-Child Coping Interactions As A Predictor Of Adjustment In Middle Childhood: A Dynamic Systems Perspective, Sarah Budney Stanger

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This study applied a contemporary dynamic systems methodology (state space grids) to examine how the structure of parent-child coping interactions, above and beyond the content of such interactions, influences adjustment (i.e., internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and coping efficacy) over time in middle childhood. A community sample of children (N = 65) completed a stressful laboratory task with a parent present, during which parent and child behavior were observed. Parent behavior during the task was coded using a socialization of coping framework. Parents' verbal suggestions to their child about how to cope with the stressful task were coded as primary control …