Open AccessPARENTAL DISTANCING, BELIEFS AND CHILDREN'S REPRESENTATIONAL COMPETENCE WITHIN THE FAMILY CONTEXT
Author(s) -
Sigel Irving E.,
Lisi Ann V. McGillicuddyDe,
Johnson James E.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
ets research report series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.235
H-Index - 5
ISSN - 2330-8516
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.1980.tb01215.x
Subject(s) - psychology , distancing , developmental psychology , affect (linguistics) , competence (human resources) , discriminant function analysis , turkish , path analysis (statistics) , social psychology , covid-19 , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , statistics , mathematics , disease , communication , machine learning , computer science , infectious disease (medical specialty) , pathology
ABSTRACT A study of relationships among demographic variables such as SES and family constellation, process variables such as parental beliefs and teaching strategies, and preschool‐age children's level of representational competence was conducted within the framework of the family as a system of mutual influences. One hundred and twenty families that varied with respect to number, spacing, ordinal position and sex of children and parent education‐income level were participants. Discriminant function analyses and analyses of variance indicated that both parents and children from one‐child families differed from those from three‐child families and that child spacing and SES were often involved in interactions that produced significant differences between groups. Regression analyses indicated that parental beliefs and behaviors and parental distancing behaviors and child outcomes were related to one another above and beyond demographic characteristics. Results of path analyses generally supported the model of the family in which parental distancing behaviors affect children's representational competence and children's ability level, as well as parental education, age and number of children, affect parental beliefs.