CURRENT STUDIES
Moral Identity Study: This study takes a new approach to the assessment of moral identity (importance of moral traits to one's self-concept), measuring this construct through implicit computer tasks rather than the typical explicit assessments. We are interested in determining how implicit moral identity relates to prosocial outcomes, such as helping a person in distress, and political and religious orientations. An additional goal is to explore how parenting techniques used to teach moral values relate to implicitly measured moral identities and, in turn, relate to the ways that individuals feel children are best taught moral values.
Disclosure Study: This study examines the role of parental knowledge in children’s social development. In particular, we are examining one possible precursor of parental knowledge - children’s disclosure of their thoughts and feelings – as well as a possible predictor of children’s disclosure: parent’s disclosure about their own thoughts and feelings. We are analysing disclosure that pertains to 1) anxieties and worries, and 2) moral dilemmas and proper behaviour. Since children’s disclosure to their parents have been linked to positive child adjustment, it is important to determine what factors facilitate child disclosure. Participants are adolescents aged 12-14 with their parents and teachers. The majority of participants opt to participate in the study by completing questionnaires from home, over the internet.
Value Acquisition Study: This study explores the process of children’s acquisition of values and the role parents play in that process. The focus is on contexts not involving misdeeds or disciplinary action. University students are asked to produce narratives about experiences from their childhood when their care-givers either successfully or unsuccessfully taught them an important value. These narratives are coded based on categories formulated during a pilot study to identify the learning context and the parenting techniques used. A multicultural sample will allow for comparisons across four cultural groups (East-Asian, South-Asian, Middle-Eastern and Western-European).
Longitudinal Exploration of Adolescent Parenting (LEAP) Study: Our lab has been conducting this study for the past six years. We are currently collecting data from our original participants for the third time. In 2004, when we began this study, the children who participated were 10 to 12 years old. Mother-child pairs came into the lab together and did a wide variety of tasks, including interviews about their interactions together, filling out questionnaires about themselves and their families, and giving their reactions to video clips. We also asked dads and teachers to fill out some questionnaires and send them to our lab. These original participants have now reached high school and are 14 to 16 years of age. Right now we are asking mothers, fathers, adolescents, and their teachers to participate in our study by completing questionnaires online. This study is very exciting because it gives us informative and valuable data about how adolescents and their families change over time, and through early adolescence.
Over the past six years this study has produced many interesting and significant results. After the first time point we found that mothers who are knowledgeable and accurate about what types of events distress their 10 to 12 year-old children have children who cope better with stress and are more empathic. What is especially interesting is that easily distressed children who have mothers who are more knowledgeable about what types of things they can do to make them feel better actually use more positive coping strategies (e.g., seeking social support, self-reliance and problem solving) and exhibit more prosocial behaviors (e.g., helping, sharing, caring) with their peers.
We also discovered that at age 10 to 12, children of mothers who parent positively, with characteristics like warmth, involvement, reasoning, perspective-taking, and responsiveness to distress, talk to their mothers more about what they do in their spare time. This self-disclosure, in turn, predicts the use of positive coping strategies (e.g., seeking social support, self-reliance and problem solving) by early adolescents. It is also interesting that mothers with a greater tendency to become angry have children who keep more secrets from them about what they do in their spare time, and these children also use more negative strategies to cope with stress (e.g., avoiding the problem, aggression, worrying).
At the second time point we looked at what 12 to 14 year-olds told us about difficult situations they had recently experienced with their friends. We found that early adolescents most often report problems with friendships that involve pragmatic issues (e.g., a friend borrowing something and damaging it or not returning it, conflicting plans with different friends), followed by problems due to friends not getting along, issues of relational aggression (e.g., being excluded from a party), verbal or physical aggression, emotional disappointment (e.g., a friend betraying their trust), and least often friends engaging in dangerous or illegal behaviors (e.g., smoking, drugs). We also looked at how often and why early adolescents might tell their mothers about their friendship dilemmas. The adolescents reported disclosing to seek comfort more than any other reason. We found that adolescents who tell their mothers about their friendship problems and then seek their mothers’ advice report having better quality friendships.
Finally, we have also examined how children change from age 10-12 to age 12-14, and the influence that parents have on their development. First, we have found that children who talk to their mothers about their thoughts and feelings have mothers who, two years later, know what strategies they can use to most effectively comfort their children when they’re upset. We also found that mothers who are accepting of their children and who are also knowledgeable about how they can best comfort their children have children who actually use less positive strategies to cope with stress. One possible explanation for this puzzling finding is that mothers who do not see a need to alter their children’s behavior with respect to coping strategies may be offering too much support or comfort when their children are distressed. Mothers who are accepting but not knowledgeable run a smaller risk of providing apparently harmful comfort because they do not know what is, in fact, comforting.
A second interesting longitudinal finding concerns mothers who are inconsistent in their discipline, meaning that they lack follow-through with their punishments. These mothers tend to have adolescents who, when measured two years later, are less empathic. However, this is only true for adolescents who have a lower tendency to experience negative emotions, a personality trait known as neuroticism. Mothers of more “neurotic” children do not seem to have the same effect on their adolescents’ development of empathy from age 10-12 to age 12-14. These findings suggest that being highly neurotic may serve to protect early adolescents from the potentially damaging effects of inconsistent discipline.
We anticipate that our third wave of data collection will yield some very interesting and important results. In this time point we have included measures of parent-adolescent communication and closeness and are looking forward to exploring how parenting and the parent-child relationship when the children were 10 to 12 has influenced how the children have developed through early adolescence. We would like to extend a very big thank you to all of the moms, dads, adolescents, and teachers who have helped us with our research so far, and have continued to do so over the years. As you can see, your participation is very valuable!
PAST STUDIES
Friendship Study: In this study, we are interested in two things: how much adolescents disclose to their parents about friendship-related issues, and the contribution parents may make to their adolescents success with friends in the form of advice-giving. As a follow-up to the Accuracy Study, parents and their children are visiting the lab for a second time, when the children are 12-14 years old (Grades 7 and 8). Adolescents and mothers are interviewed about the adolescents close friendships and issues related to disclosure and advice-seeking/advice-giving. Adolescents, mothers and fathers also answer questions online about the adolescent's disclosure of information related to peer dilemmas, as well as report on their own friendship quality and social competence. In addition, teachers report on the adolescent's social competence and prosocial behavior.
Accuracy Study (Parenting Characteristics,
Maternal Accuracy and Child Outcomes): In this study, we are
interested in how well mothers know their children, how this knowledge
effects their ability to achieve specific outcomes in the domains of
compliance and coping with distress, and the influence this has on
children. We are also interested in how certain maternal characteristics
are related to greater accuracy or knowledge. Families with children in
grades 5 or 6 who participate in this study are involved in a number of
things. First, mothers are asked to fill out some questionnaires at
home. Mother and child then visit the lab and participate in separate
interviews where they engage in various tasks and answer questions about
family life. Once the study is complete, questionnaires are sent to the
child's father and teacher with the mother's permission. (Principal
Investigators: Alisa Almas and Julia Vinik; Team Members: Keith D'Souza,
Maria Brunello, Chiara Cautillo, Veronica Gershenzon, Beata Raczynska,
Sara Nowacki, Jeff Robinson, Julia Viscomi, Karain Lau, Ciann Wilson)
Disclosure Study (Factors Facilitating Disclosure): This study
examines the role of parental knowledge in children’s social
development. In particular, we are examining one possible precursor of
parental knowledge - children’s disclosure of their thoughts and
feelings – as well as a possible predictor of children’s disclosure:
parent’s disclosure about their own thoughts and feelings. We are
analysing disclosure that pertains to 1) anxieties and worries, and 2)
moral dilemmas and proper behaviour. Since children’s disclosure to
their parents have been linked to positive child adjustment, it is
important to determine what factors facilitate child disclosure.
Participants are adolescents aged 12-14 with their parents and teachers.
The majority of participants opt to participate in the study by
completing questionnaires from home, over the internet.
Parental Antecedents and Psychosocial Correlates of Children's
Non-Compliance Strategies: In this study, we explored the strategies
of 9-11 year old children with their parents during certain situations,
such as household chores. In particular, we were interested in examining
how these strategies are related to different aspects of parenting, such
as autonomy support, strictness, warmth, and problem-solving ability.
This was a follow-up study: families who took part had already visited
the lab in 2001. In the follow-up study, mothers and children came in to
the research lab, while fathers completed questionnaires at home via
email. Mothers kept a 'diary' of their experiences and were interviewed
for their opinions on a series of problematic child-rearing situations.
Children were also interviewed and given questionnaires to complete.
Mothers and children also had the opportunity to interact together on
two joint tasks.
(Investigators: Tsasha Awong, Joanna Anderson, Chris Kitamura, Liz
Arbour)
Click here to read about the results
Maternal Attributions, Mother-Child Emotion Discourse and Child Coping:
In this study, we looked at the different ways mothers converse with
their preschool children about future-oriented events that might be
sources of "everyday stress". These might include such things as
starting a new program or going to a doctor's appointment. In
particular, we looked at how these conversational styles might be
related to a child's emotion regulation and coping strategies.
Additionally, we looked at characteristics of mothers, such as their
attachment representations or their attributional styles, which might
predict how they engage in emotion talk with their children. Mothers and
fathers were first asked to fill out a questionnaire package at home,
following which mothers and their children came into the research lab.
During the lab visit, mothers and children initially interacted together
and then they were interviewed and engaged in laboratory tasks
separately. Following the lab visit, questionnaire packages were sent to
the child's teacher for those children whose mothers have given
permission to do so.
(Investigators: Leah Lundell, Emily Fan, Helena Macario, Johanna
Rackham, Svea Vikander)