The Role of Child Emotionality in Child Behavior and Maternal Instruction on Planning Tasks

This study explored the relation of children's emotional functioning to children's behavior during individual planning and mother's and children's behaviors during joint planning. Participants were 118 mothers and their second‐grade children. Mothers rated children on their emotional intensity and children rated themselves on their use of emotion regulation strategies. Children and mother–child dyads were videotaped during planning tasks and independent observers rated their behavior. Child emotional intensity was directly related to children being less engaged in the task and to an emphasis in maternal instruction on regulatory behaviors. Some types of emotion regulation strategies modified these relations. Findings suggest that child emotionality may play an important role in the early school years in children's opportunities to learn during social‐cognitive activity.     

Child Temperament as a Mediator of Mother-Toddler Problem Solving*

This paper is concerned with the role of child temperament in regulating adult-child cognitive interaction. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether child temperament as rated by the mother at an earlier time relates to maternal guidance and partner involvement on a joint task at a later time. In Study 1, 26 2.5-year-old children and their mothers participated in joint problem solving followed by a child-only posttest involving related tasks. Children rated as having more difficult temperaments received more cognitive assistance and disapproval from their mothers, as well as greater involvement from them in more challenging aspects of the tasks. Temperament was not related to child involvement during the joint task nor to task performance during the interaction or on the posttest. In Study 2, another group of 26 2.5-year-old children and their mothers participated in joint problem solving using different tasks than in Study 1. Results from Study 2 replicate those of Study 1. Also, children rated as having more difficult temperaments performed more poorly on the individual posttest. Results support the suggestion that child temperament may mediate the cognitive opportunities that arise during parent-child collaboration and are discussed in relation to Vygotsky's notion of the zone of proximal development.     

What Do We Need To Do To Keep People Safer?

This paper explores what it might take to narrow the implementation gap between the evidence base and advice about what keeps people safe and the actual practice close to the patient and client. We describe what we have learnt about facilitating conversations with clinicians about times when their practice ‘fell short’ and how attention to the framing assumptions embedded in these stories can tell us more about what it takes to keep people safer.     

Book review

Ethnicity, Race and American foreign policy: A History Alexander DeConde Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992, 270 pp., $40.00 cloth; $15.95 paper.