The goal of this project is to examine maltreated children's emotional behavior. Differences between physically abused, neglected, and nonmaltreated children s emotions and their cognitions about performance following failure are of central interest. Individual differences in these behaviors are likely to be affected by maltreatment.
The specific aim i s to examine children's emotional responses and self-evaluations in response to success and failure as a function of maltreated status and level of punishment. Use of physical and verbal punishment will be assessed.
A second aim of the proposal is to examine the relation of the punishment variables to agency designations of maltreatment and to determine whether they independently influence children s emotional behavior. The sample will be 270 4- and 5-year olds and their mothers, 180 of whom will have a positive history of either physical abuse (90) or neglect (90). The remaining 90 will have no history of maltreatment and serve as a matched control group. Matching will be done on major demographic variables. Physical and verbal punishment and child blaming, a specific form of verbal punishment, will be assessed in all families by maternal report. Child blaming also will be assessed through observation. Children will experience both success and failure on experimental - controlled tasks and their emotional behavior and cognitions about performance will be obtained. To observe child blaming, mothers and children will be videotaped as they interact around the child's completing a difficult task. The quality of maternal statements will be quantified and combined with measures of child blaming obtained through maternal report. Maltreated children are expected to differ in the amount of shame and pride shown, with physically abused children showing the greatest shame, the least pride, and more self-blaming and pessimistic beliefs about their ability. Punishment is also expected to promote greater shame, negative affect and more pessimistic cognitions among children. Physical abuse is hypothesized to be associated with greatest use of punishment relative to neglect and nonmaltreatment. Children who are both maltreated and experience high levels of punishment are expected to show the most negative emotions and cognitions about self-ability and the least pride.
| Sullivan, Margaret Wolan; Bennett, David S; Lewis, Michael (2013) Individual differences in the cortisol responses of neglected and comparison children. Child Maltreat 18:8-16 |
| Bennett, David S; Sullivan, Margaret Wolan; Lewis, Michael (2010) Neglected children, shame-proneness, and depressive symptoms. Child Maltreat 15:305-14 |
| Bennett, David S; Wolan Sullivan, Margaret; Thompson, Shanel M et al. (2010) Early child neglect: does it predict obesity or underweight in later childhood? Child Maltreat 15:250-4 |
| Bennett, David S; Sullivan, Margaret Wolan; Lewis, Michael (2006) Relations of parental report and observation of parenting to maltreatment history. Child Maltreat 11:63-75 |
| Bennett, David S; Sullivan, Margaret Wolan; Lewis, Michael (2005) Young children's adjustment as a function of maltreatment, shame, and anger. Child Maltreat 10:311-23 |
