Children's affective responses to the expressive cues of others.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to D B Bugental.
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Children between the ages of 5 and 10 years watched a videotape of a child having a routine medical exam. Embedded within the scenes were systematic variations of depicted facial affect shown by doctor and child. Measures were taken of autonomic reactions and information-processing errors in response to positive, neutral, and negative affective cues. For 5-6-year-olds, processing errors were greatest in the negative affect condition. Additionally, peak increases in heart rate (HR) and skin conductance level (SCL) were demonstrated by 5-6-year-olds in response to negative affect shown by the witnessed child; increases in HR were in turn predictive of processing errors. Older children (9-10 years) showed trends reflecting reduced processing errors in response to witnessed negative affect. It was suggested that younger children respond to salient threat cues with a "defensive" response pattern that is relatively adaptive at younger but not older ages.
In a 6-month follow-up study of 2 interventions with hyperactive boys, different patterns of improvement were observed for an intervention which focused on self-control and 1 which employed contingent social reinforcement. Of the 2 manipulations, self-control methods produced significantly stronger long-term benefits in terms of the child's increased perception of personal control over academic outcomes; social reinforcement, on the other hand, produced significantly stronger long-term benefits in terms of teacher ratings of hyperactivity or impulsivity (Conners Teacher Rating Scale). Both interventions produced stable changes in terms of decreased behavioral impulsivity as measured by qualitative error scores on the Porteus Mazes.
Assertiveness and affective quality of voice intonation were compared for approving, neutral, and disapproving statements made by 20 sets of parents of elementary-aged children who demonstrated emotional or behavioral disturbances in school and 20 sets of parents of "normal" control children. For mothers, a significant interaction (p = .01) was found between parental group and verbal affect: mothers of "normal" control children demonstrated more assertive voice intonation when expressing affective verbal content (approval or disapproval) than when making neutral statements; mothers of "disturbed" children demonstrated less assertive voice intonation when expressing affective verbal content than when making neutral statements. Differences between mothers on affective quality of voice did not reach statistical significance. No significant differences were found for fathers.