Early Childhood Developmental and Nutritional Training for Foster Parents

This exploratory study examined the effectiveness of a foster parent nutrition training program. Conducted in collaboration between Woman, Infants and Children (WIC) and a state foster care licensing agency, the study involved providing an intensive training to 11 self-selected foster parents. The participants completed pre-tests and post-tests related to their level of knowledge and comfort in the area of infant nutritional needs. Paired t-tests detected significant differences before and after the intervention, with participants reporting improved knowledge and understanding. While the sample was small and voluntary, the authors feel these pilot results merit further attention in the areas of practice and research.     

Foster parent perceptions of placement breakdown

The purpose of the study was to describe the perceived causes of placement breakdown by foster parents. Sixty-three foster parents from fifty families were asked to describe their challenges in response to the following question: “What would make you consider ending a foster placement”? The responses to this question were analyzed using multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis, to yield nine themes. Foster parents indicated that they would consider ending a placement if there was a danger to their family, if the child could not adapt to the home or if they could not handle the child's behavior. Participants reported that the complex health needs of a foster child, problems dealing with the foster agency, and several unsuccessful attempts to make the placement work would cause a placement to breakdown. Foster parents also indicated that they would consider ending a placement if their personal circumstances changed, their own health deteriorated, or there was a lack of appropriate external support in place. The results of the study point to gaps in the research on violence in general foster care, foster parent perceptions of contributions to a foster child's transition back to his or her birth family, and the process of foster parent decision-making in cases of placement breakdown.     

Linking Self‐Regulation and Risk Proneness to Risky Sexual Behavior: Pathways through Peer Pressure and Early Substance Use

The linkages between self‐regulation in childhood, risk proneness in early adolescence, and risky sexual behavior in mid‐adolescence were examined in a cohort of children (N=518) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The possible mediating role of two early adolescent variables (substance use and negative peer pressure) was also examined. Self‐regulation was assessed by maternal report at ages 8–9, and risk proneness, comprising aspects of sensation seeking and decision making, was assessed by adolescent self‐report at ages 12–13. Structural equation models predicting risky sexual behavior at ages 16–17 indicated that self‐regulation operated partly through early adolescent substance use, whereas risk proneness operated through early adolescent substance use and negative peer pressure. The overall model did not differ significantly for boys and girls, although there were gender differences in the strength of particular paths. These long‐term longitudinal results support the importance of early self‐regulation and risk proneness in setting the stage for adolescent sexual risk taking and implicate substance use and negative peer pressure as processes through which risk proneness and poor self‐regulation lead to risky sexual behavior.     

Parental Perspectives Regarding Poverty-Based Programs

Title I was created to eliminate the achievement gap and to provide additional support for children living at or below the poverty threshold. In order to be able to evaluate and adjust programs designed to academically serve children in poverty, educators need parental involvement and insight. Unfortunately, collecting such information has proven difficult. The purpose of this study was to try to find a means to generate parental perspectives on the value of poverty-based programs and on how these programs contribute to academic success for their children. The researchers found such a means by forming collaborative relationships with social workers, and gained valuable insights from parents into whether these programs are viewed as helping children succeed academically and on how programs should be altered.     

Neural Correlates of Human and Monkey Face Processing in 9‐Month‐Old Infants

Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence suggests a gradual, experience‐dependent specialization of cortical face processing systems that takes place largely in the 1st year of life. To further investigate these findings, event‐related potentials (ERPs) were collected from typically developing 9‐month‐old infants presented with pictures of familiar and unfamiliar monkey or human faces in 2 different orientations. Analyses revealed differential processing across changes in monkey and human faces. The N290 was greater for familiar compared to unfamiliar faces, regardless of species or orientation. In contrast, the P400 to unfamiliar faces was greater than to familiar faces, but only for the monkey condition. The P400 to human faces differentiated the orientation of both familiar and unfamiliar faces. These results suggest more specific processing of human compared to monkey faces in 9‐month‐olds.     

Canonical correlation analysis of residential and vocational outcomes following psychiatric rehabilitation

This analysis uses canonical correlation techniques to explore client outcomes following psychosocial rehabilitation services in two rehabilitation areas: vocational and residential. At issue are the ways in which these two outcomes are affected by a series of eight client characteristics and service delivery features. The overarching question is the effectiveness of the program in establishing independence vocationally and residentially, and whether the same set of factors influences these two outcomes for persons with mental illness. Subjects were 212 ex-clients of a psychosocial rehabilitation agency who were working six months after leaving the program. The analysis derived two canonical functions both of which were significant. Canonical loadings and cross loadings indicated that client level of functioning and program tenure loaded most strongly with residential status on the first canonical variate while education loaded most strongly with salary on the second. These results support the notions that different predictors account for the variance associated with different outcomes following psychosocial rehabilitation. Discussion of the relevance of strong predictor variables highlights ways they can impact program design. Finally, the usefulness of canonical correlation in longitudinal program evaluation research is explored.     

Infant Contingency/Extinction Performance After Observing Partial Reinforcement

Social information gathering by infants 6 and 12 months old was examined as a foundation for later social learning that may be uniquely human. Infant performance on a contingency/extinction task was studied following a caregiver demonstration of the contingency on varied reinforcement schedules. Infants who observed caregivers receive any reinforcing stimulation in pretraining decreased responding over their own acquisition period, possibly because they began to habituate to the reinforcer. In extinction, infants who observed caregivers receive partial reinforcement in pretraining were more persistent in responding than others. This suggested that direct experience with partial reinforcement is not needed for greater persistence in extinction. These studies revealed details of social learning in the 1st year.     

Challenging the Rhetoric of Choice in Maternal Labour‐Force Participation: Preferred Versus Contracted Work Hours

The notion of choice in maternal labour‐force participation (LFP) is a contentious one, with assertions that LFP is a direct result of either personal inclinations, such as employment commitment or external factors, such as historically available opportunities. This article suggests an alternative framework for understanding and testing choice in LFP using preferred versus contracted work hours. It explores these constructs quantitatively in a group of working mothers (N = 275) with dependent children and investigates qualitatively the underlying reasons for discrepant preferred versus contracted work hours in a sub‐sample of these women with under‐school‐aged children (N = 20). The results show that nearly two‐thirds of women working full time would prefer to work part time and the major reasons for not acting on their preferences is because of the nature of the job and the lack of career opportunities available for part‐time employees.     

Employment and the Risk of Domestic Abuse Among Low‐Income Women

This paper uses data from 2 randomized evaluations of welfare‐to‐work programs—the Minnesota Family Investment Program and the National Evaluation of Welfare‐to‐Work Strategies—to estimate the effect of employment on domestic abuse among low‐income single mothers. Unique to our analysis is the application of a 2‐stage least squares method, in which random assignment enables us to control for omitted characteristics that might otherwise confound the association between employment and domestic abuse. We find that increased maternal employment decreases subsequent reports of domestic abuse in both studies. In the Minnesota Family Investment Program—a program with an enhanced income disregard that allowed welfare mothers to keep a portion of their welfare income as earnings rose—an increase in household incomes appears to have contributed to reductions in reports of domestic abuse.