Do hostile attributions and negative affect explain the association between authoritarian beliefs and harsh parenting?

The present study examined the associations between authoritarian parenting beliefs, attributions of hostile intent, negative affect, and harsh parenting practices. General population parents (N=183; 31.1% fathers) completed self-report measures of authoritarian parenting beliefs and read vignettes describing children engaging in transgressions. Following each vignette, parents indicated the extent to which they would attribute hostile intent to the child, feel negative affect, and respond with harsh parenting practices (e.g., yelling, hitting). As hypothesized, parents who subscribed to higher levels of authoritarian beliefs attributed more hostile intent to the child and expected to feel more negative affect in response to the transgressions. In turn, higher levels of hostile attributions and negative affect were associated with increased likelihood of harsh parenting practices. Results from a path analysis revealed that the association between authoritarian parenting beliefs and harsh parenting practices was fully explained by attributions of hostile intent and negative affect.

Reactions to children's transgressions in at-risk caregivers: does mitigating information, type of transgression, or caregiver directive matter?

This study examined whether caregivers who exhibit high risk for child physical abuse differ from low-risk caregivers in reactions to transgressing children. Caregivers read vignettes describing child transgressions. These vignettes varied in: (a) the type of transgression described (moral, conventional, personal), (b) presentation of transgression-mitigating information (present, absent), and (c) whether a directive to avoid the transgression was in the vignette (yes, no). After reading each vignette, caregivers provided ratings reflecting their: (a) perceptions of transgression wrongness, (b) internal attributions about the transgressing child, (c) perceptions of the transgressing child's hostile intent, (d) own expected negative post-transgression affect, and (e) perceived likelihood of responding to the transgression with discipline that displayed power assertion and/or induction. For moral transgressions (cruelty, dishonesty, hostility, or greed), mitigating information reduced caregiver expectations that they would feel negative affect and, subsequent to the transgression, use disciplinary strategies that display power assertion. These mitigating effects were smaller among at-risk caregivers than among low-risk caregivers. Moreover, when transgressions disobeyed a directive, among low-risk caregivers, mitigating information reduced the expectation that responses to transgressions would include inductive disciplinary strategies, but it did not do so among at-risk caregivers. In certain circumstances, compared to low-risk caregivers, at-risk caregivers expect to be relatively unaffected by transgression-mitigating information. These results suggest that interventions that increase an at-risk caregiver's ability to properly assess and integrate mitigating information may play a role in reducing the caregiver's risk of child physical abuse.

The Word Game: an innovative strategy for assessing implicit processes in parents at risk for child physical abuse.

OBJECTIVE: Contemporary theories of child physical abuse (CPA) emphasize the proximal role of social cognitive processes (many of which are implicit in nature) in the occurrence of parental aggression. However, methods that allow for the systematic examination of implicit cognitive processes during the course of aggressive interactions are needed. To address this need, the present study was designed to examine the utility of the Word Game, an innovative procedure designed to assess implicit changes in schema accessibility during the course of an interpersonal exchange involving aggressive response options. METHODS: The game involves a series of competitive reaction time trials which are actually lexical decision making trials designed to determine the accessibility of schema throughout the game. Each parent was led to believe that they were competing against another player with whom they exchanged sound blasts of varying intensities. Participants in the present study were parents who were either low (n=50) or high (n=20) risk for CPA. RESULTS: Results revealed that high CPA risk parents behaved more aggressively than low CPA risk parents and that provocation augmented the aggressiveness of all participants. Among high CPA risk parents, positive schema became less accessible (whereas negative schema became more accessible) following lost rounds. At the conclusion of the game, high CPA risk parents reported more aggressive motives than low CPA risk parents. Further, aggressive motives significantly mediated the association between CPA risk status and aggressiveness (i.e., mean sound blast selections). CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, results support the potential utility of the Word Game as a means of advancing the study of social cognitive processes involved in parental aggression.

Revisiting the issue of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory's internal consistency in adolescent samples.

PURPOSE: Although the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory is generally considered to be a reliable screening tool for assessing child physical abuse risk, there is concern that it may lack internal consistency when completed by adolescents (Blinn-Pike and Mingus, J Adolesc 2000;23:107-11). This concern has been reflected in subsequent reviews summarizing the CAP's psychometric properties (Walker and Davies, J Fam Violence 2010;25:215-27), and calls for data on the reliability of the CAP Inventory as completed by adolescents have been issued (Blinn-Pike, J Adolesc Health 2002;30:148). The purpose of this study was to provide additional data examining the internal consistency of the CAP Inventory as completed by adolescents in a variety of contexts. METHOD: This study included five samples comprising 3,281 adolescent and adult respondents who completed the CAP Inventory. Two samples included at-risk mothers who were enrolled in home-visiting services and were participating in program evaluations. Three samples included college students the majority of whom were nonparents participating in the research to explore the risk of physical abuse among children. RESULTS: The analyses showed high internal consistency estimates for the CAP Inventory abuse scale as completed by adolescent mothers (Kuder-Richardson reliability coefficient range = .90-.96). Moreover, regardless of the sampling technique, parental status, or demographic characteristics, our analyses revealed overall good to excellent internal consistency estimates for the CAP Inventory abuse scale as completed by adolescent respondents. Indeed, the internal consistency estimates obtained from adolescent respondents were similar to the estimates obtained for adult respondents in each of these same samples. CONCLUSION: Our results provide strong support for a claim of good to excellent internal consistency of the CAP Inventory with adolescent samples.

Does accessibility of positive and negative schema vary by child physical abuse risk?

OBJECTIVE: To examine differences in accessibility of positive and negative schema in parents with high and low risk for child physical abuse (CPA). METHODS: This study combined picture priming and lexical decision making methods to assess the accessibility of positive and negative words following presentation of child and adult faces. The child and adult faces depicted positive, ambiguous, and negative affective valences. The sample included 67 (51 low and 16 high CPA risk) general population parents. RESULTS: CPA risk status was associated with accessibility of positive/negative words only following priming with faces of the opposite affective valence. More specifically, high CPA risk parents were slower to respond to positive (negative) words following priming with negative (positive) faces. Exploratory analyses indicated that this pattern of findings was more clearly apparent when picture primes involved adult faces. CONCLUSION: The present findings suggest that high and low CPA risk parents differ in how they process affectively incongruent information. Research is needed to further examine schema accessibility, as well as to examine whether processes involved in attention and affect integration play a role in CPA risk.