The aim of this thesis was to examine the parent-child relationships and peer functioning of community-identified, 4-year-old boys with hyperactive behaviour problems. The sample consisted of 33 pervasively hyperactive boys and 34 control children. Parenting and child behaviours, and family life factors were assessed at home using a range of measures including the Parental Account of Children's Symptoms Interview (PACS), the Parenting Scale, the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), and the Life Events Questionnaire. In addition, maternal directiveness and synchrony were coded from videotaped parent-child interaction during free play. Children's peer relations were assessed with teacher ratings on the Child Behavior Scale (CBS) and observer ratings of peer interactions at kindergarten. Results showed that parents of hyperactive boys used less effective parenting skills in disciplinary situations and in coping with child behaviour problems, and spent less time in positive parent-child interaction than comparison group parents. Mothers of hyperactive boys also engaged in fewer synchronous play interactions with their sons and gave more negative ratings on indices of life stress. Poor parent coping, father-child communication, maternal synchrony, negative disciplinary practices, and life stress were significantly associated with hyperactivity after adjusting for the effects of conduct problems. The best parenting predictor of hyperactivity was maternal coping. Compared with control children, the hyperactive boys received significantly higher ratings on exclusion by peers, aggressive, noncompliant, and non-social behaviours, as well as significantly lower ratings of prosocial behaviour and peer acceptance. These between-group differences in social functioning remained significant after statistical control for the effects of conduct problems. Further analysis suggested that the associations between hyperactivity and child social behaviours were partly or wholly explained by group differences in exposure to parenting behaviours that are important for children's social development. These findings highlight the need to examine more closely the role of parenting behaviours in shaping the course, prognosis and treatment outcomes in relation to the behavioural and social adjustment of preschool hyperactive children. The implications of these findings for early childhood intervention in hyperactive behaviour problems are discussed. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

The aim of this thesis was to examine the parent-child relationships and peer functioning of community-identified, 4-year-old boys with hyperactive behaviour problems. The sample consisted of 33 pervasively hyperactive boys and 34 control children. Parenting and child behaviours, and family life factors were assessed at home using a range of measures including the Parental Account of Children's Symptoms Interview (PACS), the Parenting Scale, the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), and the Life Events Questionnaire. In addition, maternal directiveness and synchrony were coded from videotaped parent-child interaction during free play. Children's peer relations were assessed with teacher ratings on the Child Behavior Scale (CBS) and observer ratings of peer interactions at kindergarten. Results showed that parents of hyperactive boys used less effective parenting skills in disciplinary situations and in coping with child behaviour problems, and spent less time in positive parent-child interaction than comparison group parents. Mothers of hyperactive boys also engaged in fewer synchronous play interactions with their sons and gave more negative ratings on indices of life stress. Poor parent coping, father-child communication, maternal synchrony, negative disciplinary practices, and life stress were significantly associated with hyperactivity after adjusting for the effects of conduct problems. The best parenting predictor of hyperactivity was maternal coping. Compared with control children, the hyperactive boys received significantly higher ratings on exclusion by peers, aggressive, noncompliant, and non-social behaviours, as well as significantly lower ratings of prosocial behaviour and peer acceptance. These between-group differences in social functioning remained significant after statistical control for the effects of conduct problems. Further analysis suggested that the associations between hyperactivity and child social behaviours were partly or wholly explained by group differences in exposure to parenting behaviours that are important for children's social development. These findings highlight the need to examine more closely the role of parenting behaviours in shaping the course, prognosis and treatment outcomes in relation to the behavioural and social adjustment of preschool hyperactive children. The implications of these findings for early childhood intervention in hyperactive behaviour problems are discussed. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

The aim of this thesis was to examine the parent-child relationships and peer functioning of community-identified, 4-year-old boys with hyperactive behaviour problems. The sample consisted of 33 pervasively hyperactive boys and 34 control children. Parenting and child behaviours, and family life factors were assessed at home using a range of measures including the Parental Account of Children's Symptoms Interview (PACS), the Parenting Scale, the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), and the Life Events Questionnaire. In addition, maternal directiveness and synchrony were coded from videotaped parent-child interaction during free play. Children's peer relations were assessed with teacher ratings on the Child Behavior Scale (CBS) and observer ratings of peer interactions at kindergarten. Results showed that parents of hyperactive boys used less effective parenting skills in disciplinary situations and in coping with child behaviour problems, and spent less time in positive parent-child interaction than comparison group parents. Mothers of hyperactive boys also engaged in fewer synchronous play interactions with their sons and gave more negative ratings on indices of life stress. Poor parent coping, father-child communication, maternal synchrony, negative disciplinary practices, and life stress were significantly associated with hyperactivity after adjusting for the effects of conduct problems. The best parenting predictor of hyperactivity was maternal coping. Compared with control children, the hyperactive boys received significantly higher ratings on exclusion by peers, aggressive, noncompliant, and non-social behaviours, as well as significantly lower ratings of prosocial behaviour and peer acceptance. These between-group differences in social functioning remained significant after statistical control for the effects of conduct problems. Further analysis suggested that the associations between hyperactivity and child social behaviours were partly or wholly explained by group differences in exposure to parenting behaviours that are important for children's social development. These findings highlight the need to examine more closely the role of parenting behaviours in shaping the course, prognosis and treatment outcomes in relation to the behavioural and social adjustment of preschool hyperactive children. The implications of these findings for early childhood intervention in hyperactive behaviour problems are discussed. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

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When evaluating a situation that results in harm, it is critical to consider how a person’s prior intention may have been causally responsible for the action that resulted in the harmful outcome. This thesis examined children’s developing understanding of intentional causation in reasoning about harmful outcomes, and the relation between this understanding and mental-state reasoning. Four-, 6-, and 8-year-old children, and adults, were told eight stories in which characters’ actions resulted in harmful outcomes. Story types differed in how the actions that resulted in harm were causally linked to their prior intentions such that: (1) characters wanted to, intended to, and did perform a harmful act; (2) they wanted and intended to perform a harmful act, but instead, accidentally brought about the harmful outcome; (3) they wanted and intended to perform a harmful act, then changed their mind, but accidentally brought about the harmful outcome; (4) they did not want or intend to harm, but accidentally brought about a harmful outcome. Participants were asked to judge the characters’ intentions, make punishment judgments, and justify their responses. Additionally, children were given first- and second-order false-belief tasks, commonly used to assess mental-state reasoning. The results indicated that intention judgment accuracy improved with age. However, all age groups had difficulty evaluating the intention in the deviant causal chain scenario (Searle, 1983), in which the causal link between intention and action was broken but a harmful intention was maintained. Further, the results showed a developmental pattern in children’s punishment judgments based on their understanding of intentional causation, although the adults’ performance did not follow the same pattern. Also, younger children referred to the characters’ intentions less frequently in their justifications of their punishment judgments. The results also revealed a relation between belief-state reasoning and intentional-causation reasoning in scenarios that did not involve, or no longer involved, an intention to harm. Further, reasoning about intentional causation was related to higher-level understanding of mental states. The implications of these findings in clarifying and adding to previous research on the development of understanding of intentional causation and intentions in moral reasoning are discussed.

To date, there is compelling evidence to show that theory-of-mind development is influenced by different environmental and cognitive factors. However, despite our understanding of the different individual processes that facilitate theory-of-mind acquisition, what remains relatively unclear is how these processes operate together during development. The goal of the present dissertation is to examine mediation (examines the relationship between two different factors and address the question of “why” or “how” one variable predicts or causes an outcome variable) and moderation (examines “when” or “for whom” a variable most strongly predicts or causes an outcome variable) processes that can help explain why and under what conditions environmental and cognitive factors are important for theory-of-mind development. The investigation began by examining the influence of environmental factors on theory-of-mind development. Mediation analyses were used to examine “why” environmental factors such as family (i.e., family risk) and socio-linguistic factors (i.e., parental cognitive talk), may be important for theory-of-mind development. Preliminary results demonstrated possible mediated effects of both family risk and parental cognitive talk on theory of mind. That is, family risk may delay children’s theory-of-mind development by impeding the rate of language acquisition, whereas parental cognitive talk may facilitate more advanced theory-of-mind understanding by encouraging more parent-child reciprocity during conversations. Next, the effects of cognitive factors on theory-of-mind development were explored. Moderation analysis was used to examine under what conditions children’s language abilities and conflict inhibition skills (children’s ability to inhibit a prepotent response while responding with a less salient response) are important for theory-of-mind acquisition. Although there may be limited effects of child language and conflict inhibition on early theory of mind, advanced theory-of-mind understanding such as false belief requires both. However, optimal effects of child language on false-belief understanding occurred when children also had high levels of conflict inhibition ability. These findings suggest that effects of child language on false belief are contingent on children’s conflict inhibition skills. Finally, to investigate how environmental and cognitive factors operate together during theory-of-mind development, moderation analysis was conducted to examine whether delays in language and/or conflict inhibition can be compensated for by more exposure to parental cognitive talk (and vice versa) during theory-of-mind acquisition. Although there was no evidence to suggest compensatory effects, results demonstrated that child language and parental cognitive talk both independently contributed to theory of mind. These findings suggest that environmental (e.g., parental cognitive talk) and cognitive factors (e.g., child language) play distinct roles during theory-of-mind development. Overall, these results demonstrate the value of understanding theory-of-mind development from a bioecological perspective where children are both directly and indirectly influenced by multiple mechanisms during theory-of-mind development.

Purpose: To examine the social competence of childhood brain tumour survivors in the context of a group social skills intervention program developed to address documented social deficits among this population and to expand outcomes obtained from a feasibility study, by: conceptualizing social competence as three separate but interrelated constructs including social adjustment, social performance, and social skills; incorporating a control group; eliciting teacher responses; and examining sense of self. Methods: Participants were 23 survivors (10 males; 13 females) aged 7 to 15 years and comprised an intervention (n=15) and control group (n=8). The intervention consisted of 8 2-hour weekly sessions focused on social skills including friendship making. At the level of social adjustment, intervention participants, controls, parents, and teachers (n=6) completed standardized measures of social adjustment including: social skills (SSRS, Gresham & Elliott, 1990); social functioning (Varni, 1999); and social problems (Achenbach, 2001). At the level of social performance, behavioural observations were conducted on intervention participants. At the level of social skills, intervention participants responded to the Social Problem-Solving Measure (SPSM; Vannatta, 1993). Survivors also completed standardized sense of self measures. Results: Outcomes related to social adjustment showed a significant increase from Time 1 to Time 2 for parent reported SSRS within and between groups. Significant improvements were also found for parent reported social problems between groups. Child reported social problems decreased within groups and a borderline effect was found between groups. Teachers reported improved SSRS scores form Time 1 to Time 2. For social performance, significant increases in frequency were found for maintaining facial attention and social conversations with peers over the course of the intervention. At the level of social skills, a borderline significant increase was found for quantity of strategies offered from Time 1 to Time 2. No significant findings were found for sense of self data. Conclusions: Improvements after intervention were noted at each level of social competence, but primarily at the level of social adjustment. Control group and teacher outcomes strengthen findings. This is the first study to explore varying levels of social competence and provides important insight into the source of survivors’ social deficits.

When evaluating a situation that results in harm, it is critical to consider how a person’s prior intention may have been causally responsible for the action that resulted in the harmful outcome. This thesis examined children’s developing understanding of intentional causation in reasoning about harmful outcomes, and the relation between this understanding and mental-state reasoning. Four-, 6-, and 8-year-old children, and adults, were told eight stories in which characters’ actions resulted in harmful outcomes. Story types differed in how the actions that resulted in harm were causally linked to their prior intentions such that: (1) characters wanted to, intended to, and did perform a harmful act; (2) they wanted and intended to perform a harmful act, but instead, accidentally brought about the harmful outcome; (3) they wanted and intended to perform a harmful act, then changed their mind, but accidentally brought about the harmful outcome; (4) they did not want or intend to harm, but accidentally brought about a harmful outcome. Participants were asked to judge the characters’ intentions, make punishment judgments, and justify their responses. Additionally, children were given first- and second-order false-belief tasks, commonly used to assess mental-state reasoning. The results indicated that intention judgment accuracy improved with age. However, all age groups had difficulty evaluating the intention in the deviant causal chain scenario (Searle, 1983), in which the causal link between intention and action was broken but a harmful intention was maintained. Further, the results showed a developmental pattern in children’s punishment judgments based on their understanding of intentional causation, although the adults’ performance did not follow the same pattern. Also, younger children referred to the characters’ intentions less frequently in their justifications of their punishment judgments. The results also revealed a relation between belief-state reasoning and intentional-causation reasoning in scenarios that did not involve, or no longer involved, an intention to harm. Further, reasoning about intentional causation was related to higher-level understanding of mental states. The implications of these findings in clarifying and adding to previous research on the development of understanding of intentional causation and intentions in moral reasoning are discussed.

The purpose of this mixed method study was to investigate the relationship between the narrative construction of self-identity and positive change in antisocial behaviour in pregnant and parenting young women. It focused on two related aspects of identity development: (1) individuals’ conceptualizations of their personally salient self-values; and (2) “self-action coherence”: the process of constructing self-narratives that establish coherence between one’s personally salient self-values and behaviour. This study also included a qualitative exploration of how becoming a mother in adolescence and early adulthood is related to processes of identity development and behavioural change. Participants were 27 pregnant and parenting young women (ages 16 to 22) recruited from youth-serving agencies in Toronto, Ontario. Participants completed a questionnaire on history of engagement in antisocial behaviour and a semi-structured interview that explored self-identity and critical life experiences. Analyses of participant interviews suggest that positive behavioural change in pregnant and parenting young women is related to active engagement in self-reflection motivated by a convergence of meaning gleaned from a variety of life experiences, including the transition to motherhood. Quantitative findings suggest that: (1) an orientation to relational values is related to lower reported recent engagement in antisocial behaviour; (2) self-action coherence develops across adolescence and early adulthood; and (3) self-action coherence is related to reported positive behavioural change. Overall, the findings suggest that an orientation to relationships is important for establishing positive patterns of behaviour and that positive behavioural change in pregnant and parenting young women involves a process of constructing personally salient self-values and establishing behaviours that cohere with these values. The findings have theoretical implications relating to identity development in adolescence and early adulthood and its relations to behavioural functioning. The findings also have implications for applied work with pregnant and parenting young women with histories of antisocial behaviour.

Emotion processing involves specialised brain regions allowing for effective evaluation of the social environment and for the acquisition of social skills that emerge over childhood. In humans, an important aspect of normal development is the ability to understand the facial expressions of others that signal the nature and safety of the environment. Existing functional data, however, have not characterised the developmental trajectories associated with the differing neural and cognitive-behavioural development. The current thesis investigates the functional specialisation and development of the spatial and temporal patterns in neural activities during implicit processing of facial emotions from early childhood through adulthood. The first study identified brain regions engaged in implicit processing of emotional expressions using a simple emotion-processing paradigm (target detection task) with fourteen healthy adults using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. Participants responded to a non-face target (a scrambled pattern) while ignoring the emotional face presented in a different hemifield. Results showed ACC and right-lateralised amygdala activations in early latencies in response to the unattended emotional faces related to rapid and implicit attention to the task-irrelevant facial emotions, specifically during the processing of the fearful emotion. Based on the findings in the first study, the second study investigated the developmental patterns and age-related differences in brain activities associated with the rapid and automatic processing of the emotional expressions in MEG with twelve children 7 – 10 years old, twelve adolescents 12 – 15 years old and twelve young adults (mean age 24.4 years) using the same paradigm. The results showed that emotion processing developed early in childhood in the amygdalae, whereas the processing of fear had later maturation engaging the ACC. The results further demonstrated an age-correlated increase in development in ACC activity and an age-related laterality shift in the amygdalae related to fear processing. The present thesis provides new evidence contributing to the understanding of the protracted but differing normal development in the emotional brain over the childhood into adulthood, and offers critical insights into understanding possible dysfunctions of these brain regions during development.