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This study examined the relationship between parental negative talk, child aggression, and child assertiveness. Disruptive behaviors, such as aggression, have been studied multiple times, however, there is still more to learn about aggression. Few studies have examined assertive and aggressive behavior together with preschool children. Additionally, parenting is a substantial component of a child’s development and can impact their health and behaviors. One form of parenting is negative parenting. The current study focuses on a concept similar to negative parenting called parental negative talk. Currently, there is a lack of studies that examine parental negative talk. The current study included a twin sample of 290 5-year-old children and their parents from the Southern Illinois Twins/Triplets and Siblings Study (SITSS). The children and their parents participated in a 10-minute interactive puzzle task that was taped and later used to assess parental negative talk and observed child aggression. Additional measures used were personality and behavior assessments. No sex differences were found between parental negative talk, child aggression, and child assertiveness. There were no direct relationships between child aggression and parental negative talk or between parental negative talk and child assertive behavior. However, within family differences between parental behaviors and child behaviors revealed a significant positive correlation between parental negative talk and child aggression. Within a family, there was no relationship found between parental negative talk and child assertive behavior. The results from the current study indicated assertiveness was not significantly heritable. Overall, the results from the present study can assist in augmenting the current parent management training resources.

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This investigation examined the effects of emotion and lateralized presentation of a list of affective words on the learning of that list. This investigation also attempted to assess the separate influences of emotion and arousal on verbal performance. Experiment I was a 2x2 factorial design: two types of pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), negative or neutral and two gender conditions, male and female. Experiment I was used to verify that the IAPS results in an emotional response. Heart rate (HR) and skin conductance level (SCL) were measured during IAPS presentation. Emotion was assessed after IAPS presentation. Results showed the negative IAPS condition elicited significantly greater increases in SCL and decreases in HR, less self-reported of pleasantness and more self-reported activation than the neutral IAPS condition. Women had significantly lower SCL and higher HR than men; men and women did not differ in reported emotion. Experiment I verified that the negative IAPS elicit changes in SCL and negative emotion in men and women. Experiment II was a 2 x 2 x 2 mixed factorial design: two types of IAPS (negative or neutral), two AAVL conditions (positive and neutral AAVL words or negative and neutral AAVL words) and two presentation conditions (AAVL presented to the left ear (LE) or right ear (RE)). The measure of performance on the AAVL was the number of correct responses. HR and SCL were measured during presentation of the IAPS and of the AAVL. In the negative IAPS condition, performance on negative AAVL was significantly better than that for the positive AAVL; for presentation of the AAVL to the RE, performance on the negative AAVL was significantly better than that for the positive and neutral AAVLs. IAPS condition or ear of presentation alone did not significantly impact on AVVL performance or on SCL and HR during the recitation of the AAVL. Evidence showed that the effect of emotion on performance is a function of mood congruent processing and possibly the allocation of hemispheric resources. / Ph. D.

Although comorbidity is common between internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression and externalizing symptoms such as aggression, the reason for this co-occurrence remains unclear. High negative affect is one factor that has been proposed to explain the connection between anxiety and depression, as well as between these internalizing symptoms and externalizing symptoms including aggression; however, on its own, it may not explain the common association between symptoms. Research on anxiety suggests that effortful control moderates the relationship between negative affect and anxiety. Low levels of effortful control have also been tied to symptoms of depression and aggression. It was hypothesized that effortful control would moderate the impact of negative affect in associations between internalizing symptoms (anxiety and depression) and aggression such that individuals who have both high levels of negative affect and low levels of effortful control will be more likely to experience both internalizing symptoms and aggression. It was further proposed that, among the functional subtypes of aggression, this relationship would hold only for reactive aggression, and not for proactive aggression. These predictions were tested via hierarchical regression analyses of self-report data from a large sample of undergraduate students. Findings suggest that effortful control moderates the relationship between negative affect and depression; however, it functions as an additive predictor for both anxiety and reactive aggression. These findings and their implications are discussed. / Master of Science