Two-year comparison of income, education, and depression among parents participating in regular Head Start or supplementary Family Service Center Services.

Changes after 2 years in a Head Start Family Service Center Demonstration Project were assessed through pre-implementation and post-implementation interviews with 80 parents of Head Start children to evaluate changes during the project noted for the children's parents. Compared with parents in regular Head Start, parents in the supplementary Family Service Center project reported more contact with staff, increased their functional literacy scores, and increased their family incomes. The percentage of these parents with high depression scores decreased. These changes encourage implementation of more intensive social services within Head Start programs as a means of effectively assisting Head Start parents.

Longitudinal characteristics of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies--Depression Scale.

The internal structure of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies--Depression Scale was examined within the context of a three-year longitudinal study of 80 low-income parents of young children. The baseline, first-year, and second-year follow-up home interviews included the scale. Principal components factor analyses with varimax rotation yielded six factors for the baseline data, and five factors for the follow-up data with different items loading on different factors each year suggesting some instability of the factors. Cronbach alpha estimates of the internal consistency of the original factors showed satisfactory values for Depressed Affect, Positive Affect, and possibly Somatic, but not for Interpersonal. However, alpha for the total score was very strong. Positive Affect and the total score also showed stability over the three administrations. These results question the use of the original factor scores for the CES-Depression as subscales but support the use of the total score as a measure of depression.

Differential effects of pet presence and pet-bonding on young children.

Pets have been shown to influence human development, but whether the effect is due to the presence of a pet or to the person's relationship with a pet is uncertain. Mothers rated their young children's companion animal bond (relationship) and social competence on a parental questionnaire, and a researcher assessed the children's empathy, cooperation, and intelligence during home visits. Significant correlations were noted between the children's bonds with their companion animals and their scores on the social competency scales as well as their empathy scores. The lack of similar significant pet presence ("ownership") correlations supports the hypothesis that the children's relationships with their pets are more important than just the presence of one or more pets in their homes.

The Young Children's Empathy Measure: reliability, validity and effects of companion animal bonding.

The Young Children's Empathy Measure is a brief measure of young children's cognitive and affective perspective taking developed to assess preschool children's empathy. The Cronbach alpha coefficient of internal reliability for the empathy score was acceptable and interrater reliability across four rates was very high. The children's empathy scores were correlated with their ages and social development, but not with their IQs. Empathy toward children was correlated with empathy for pets, and children with a strong pet bond had higher scores on empathy for children than young children without pets.

Infants' mental and motor development: effects of home environment, maternal attitudes, marital adjustment, and socioeconomic status.

27 two-yr.-old infants and their mothers were studied in their homes to analyze the relationship between infants' development and their home environment, mothers' attitudes as parents, mothers' marital adjustment, and families' socioeconomic status. Bayley Mental Development Indexes correlated with the infants' home environment, families' socioeconomic status, and maternal attitudes. Bayley Psychomotor Development Indexes related to home environment and socioeconomic status. Home environment, maternal attitude, and marital adjustment scores correlated with socioeconomic status. The implications of these ecological factors on infants' mental and motor development are discussed.

Factors influencing tutors' perceptions of retarded children.

After tutoring experience 5 college students who tutored handicapped children responded more negatively and 27 tutors of nonhandicapped children responded less negatively to labels, Mentally Handicapped Child and Normal Child, than previously. The former label was more negatively rated than Normal Child.

Arousal and learning, and noncontingency detection in one-year-old infants.

The relationship between arousal and learning was studied with 6 infants 1 yr. of age on a two-choice discrimination learning task. The behavioral indices of arousal (activity level) and learning (response rate and reinforcements) correlated significantly (r, .44). Affective state correlated positively with activity level (r, .47) during the learning phase of the experiment. Two control conditions were presented following the learning phase of the experiment. Noncontingent (response independent) reinforcement produced significantly faster response deceleration than nonreinforcement. Affective response did not differ between nonreinforcement and noncontingent reinforcement conditions.