College of Education
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item The Maternal Role in Promoting Emotional Competence: Predicting Head Start Mothers' Expressiveness, Perceived Role, and Receptivity to Support(2010) Edwards, Nicole Megan; Lieber, Joan A.; Special Education; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Guided by Bioecological Systems Theory and Schema Theory, I investigated mothers' perceptions regarding the emotional development of their preschool children. Researchers acknowledge mothers' contributing role in influencing children's behavioral displays of emotion, but there is a dearth in the literature on mothers' emotion-related behaviors, beliefs, and needs. In my quantitative study, I collected self-report data from a mid-Atlantic, low-income, urban sample of Head Start mothers (n = 114) and assessed which child, mother, and/or community-based factors may predict the probability of mothers being high in negative expressiveness, low in positive expressiveness, not strongly supportive of the literature in their perceived role in emotional development, and not highly receptive to parent-focused support. I pretested my devised Perceived Role and Receptivity to Support measure and conducted interviewer-administered interviews (using my devised measure, the Parenting Stress Scale, the Early Childhood Behavior Problem Screening Scale, and the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire). Results supported only a few instances of group uniformity, with mostly group variability in Head Start mothers' emotion-related behaviors, beliefs and needs. Further, logistic regression analyses suggested: (1) mothers are likely to be high in negative expressiveness when raising a preschooler with a combination of internalizing and externalizing behaviors, high in parenting stress, and obtaining at least an Associate's degree; (2) mothers are predicted to be less positive in expressiveness when raising a preschooler with a delay, not having had any child in the family receive specialized services, raising only one child, dropping out of high school, and not having received advice from Head Start staff; (3) mothers are predicted to be less supportive of the purported role of mothers in the literature when raising only one child and not having received behavior advice from Head Start staff; (4) mothers are predicted to be lower in receptiveness to parent-focused support when raising a preschooler with no perceived behavior concerns, anticipating maladaptive behaviors to improve with age, raising only one child, dropping out of high school, and having had fewer outreach efforts in the past. I discuss implications for research and practice, including how results may inform early screening and parenting intervention initiatives.Item Social and Emotional Functioning of Children with Cochlear Implants(2005-04-18) Schorr, Efrat; Fox, Nathan A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Studies of infants and children have demonstrated the importance of sensory processing in facilitating social and emotional development. Children who are deaf are deprived of the information typically provided by the auditory modality that is necessary to the development of basic social and emotional skills, which serve as the foundation upon which complex social and emotional constructs are built. Children with cochlear implants experience extended periods of total auditory deprivation during early childhood, followed by the introduction of auditory stimulation. Thirty-nine children with cochlear implants, aged five through fourteen, as well as an age and sex matched group of normal hearing peers, participated in assessment of the integrated perception of multimodal stimuli, processing of facial and vocal expressions of emotion, and emotion understanding skills. These dimensions of basic social and emotional functioning are vulnerable to the effects of atypical early experience. The age at which children received their cochlear implant and the length of time that they have used the cochlear implant were hypothesized to predict performance on the assessments. Results showed that the age at implant predicted performance on the McGurk fusion task, which requires the integration of multimodal sensory stimuli. Specifically, children who received their cochlear implant prior to age 30 months accurately identified the incongruent auditory-visual stimuli, whereas children who received their cochlear implant after 30 months of age did not. Age at implant and duration of implant use did not predict performance on the other experimental tasks. Comparison of groups revealed that performance of children with cochlear implants did not differ from children with normal hearing in a facial emotion identification task and in 2 components of emotion understanding: receptive identification of facial expressions and affective-perspective taking. Children with cochlear implants demonstrated poorer performance than children with normal hearing in tasks requiring free labeling of facial expressions of emotion, and vocal emotion identification. This research suggests sensitive periods in multimodal sensory integration. The present study provides understanding of the social and emotional influences of early experience with the auditory system on children with cochlear implants.Item The emotional modulation of the startle reflex in 9-month-old infants(2004-04-30) Marshall, Dalit Himmelfarb; Fox, Nathan A; Human DevelopmentThe purpose of this research project was to investigate whether the startle reflex of 9-month-old infants can be modulated by emotional stimuli, as well as to examine the specific characteristics of infants' startle reactions in an emotion-modulated paradigm. Two studies were conducted to address these questions. In Study 1, 32 9-month-old infants viewed photographs of happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions. Infants' startle responses to acoustic probes during the presentation of the facial stimuli were recorded and compared across the three affective conditions. Autonomic and looking time data were also gathered in order to evaluate the contribution of other factors, such as attention, to the modulation of the startle reflex. The results of this study indicated a pattern of startle modulation opposite to that documented in adults. Infants demonstrated a potentiated startle reflex during the viewing of happy faces and an inhibited response during the viewing of angry faces. Differences in heart period and looking time between the affective conditions suggested that these findings were driven, at least in part, by greater allocation of attentional resources to angry expressions. To further examine the role of emotion in infants' startle modulation, an independent group of 25 9-month-old infants was tested in a second, modified emotion-modulated startle paradigm that involved the presentation of acoustic startle probes while infants were engaged in a pleasant game of peek-a-boo, an affectively neutral presentation of a spinning bingo wheel, and a mildly frustrating arm restraint episode. Autonomic and behavioral data were also gathered. As expected, the results revealed startle potentiation during the unpleasant condition and startle inhibition during the pleasant condition, indicating the existence of the emotion-modulated startle reflex in 9-month-old infants. Results of both studies are discussed in terms of the role of emotion and attention in startle modulation, the maturation of the appetitive and defensive brain systems in infants, and the importance of establishing a rigorous and age-appropriate startle paradigm to foster the study of infants' emotionality. Suggestions for further studies utilizing such a paradigm to investigate different aspects of emotional reactivity in infancy are also proposed.