Research Project
3378056
This is a resubmission of a proposal which is a follow-up study to investigate the long-term (5-year) consequences of parents' (mothers' and fathers') teaching strategies on subsequent school adjustment of their communication (CH) and non-communication handicapped (NCH) children. In the original studies it was found that parents' teaching strategies (distancing behaviors) that encourage the child to engage actively in problem solving and in representational thinking (planning and anticipation) related positively to cognitive and IQ performance. These findings were particularly strong for CH children where higher level strategies related to cognitive task performance and IQ more strongly than for NCH children. On the other hand, low-level strategies (high structure and imperative, i.e., didactic strategies) related negatively for both CH and NCH groups. Using these results as a backdrop, this new investigation is planned to follow these children up, arguing that parental distancing strategies as used initially will impact school adaptation and children's mental health five years later. Since the effects of distancing strategies are hypothesized as persisting, children coming from homes where low-level cognitive demands were used should be at greater risk for adjustment to school than children coming from homes where parents made high-level demands. For CH children, in particular, the issue is important for they are said to be at risk for psychiatric disorders or emotional problems in school. The hypothesis is that children coming from high-level distancing homes wil show significantly less psychiatric and emotional problems than those coming from low-level distancing homes because the parental strategies will have mitigated the risk aspects. Since about 5-10% of the childhood population is said to have communication handicaps, identification of a familial factor provides a means of not only understanding one source of difficulty, but also provides a basis for remediation and prevention of school failure. Sixty CH and 60 NCH children between the ages of 8 1/2-12 1/2 from the previous studies will be involved as will their parents. CH and NCH children were matched on IQ, SES, and from intact families. Multivariate correlations and multiple regression procedures will be used to test the hypothesis of this study. Implications for prevention are presented.
