The present study was designed to clarify the relations between parenting practices and cognitive performance in school-aged children. Particular attention was directed toward the identification of gender differences in the pattern of relations among variables and toward investigating a model of how parenting practices may influence children's cognitive performance. The model postulated that parenting practices affect children's task orientation (i.e., mastery behaviors and impulse control), which in turn affects their cognitive performance. Using path analysis, the model was assessed in a sample of 63 female and 62 male Grade 6 children. The measure of cognitive performance was academic grades, and the possible confounding influence of cognitive ability upon academic grades was controlled. As expected, maternal encouragement of independence predicted both boys' and girls' academic performance, with mastery behaviors mediating the relation in the female sample. Paternal nurturance also predicted girls' academic performance, with impulse control mediating this association. The remaining findings of the study provided support for individual components of the model. With respect to the relations between parenting practices and task orientation, maternal nurturance predicted both higher mastery behaviors and impulse control in the female sample. For girls, paternal restrictive control predicted lower impulse control, whereas maternal restrictive control predicted higher impulse control. For boys, both maternal and paternal nurturance predicted higher impulse control. In both the male and female samples, the expected associations between academic performance and both mastery behaviors and impulse control were obtained. The implications of the results and suggestions for future research were discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/7927 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Rinholm, Joanne. |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 254 p. |
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