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CHILD DEVELOPMENT IN CONTEXT
     
Michael Lamb, Ph.D., Head, Section on Social and Emotional Development
Yael Orbach, Ph.D., Staff Scientist
Kathleen J. Sternberg, Ph.D., Staff Scientist
Margaret-Ellen Pipe, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow
Craig Abbott, Ph.D., Statistician
Susan S. Chuang, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
Hillary N. Fouts, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
Eva V. Guterman, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
Karen L. Thierry, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
Lieselotte Ahnert, Ph.D., Guest Researcher
Jan Aldridge, Ph.D., Guest Researcher
Cecile Bassen, M.D., Guest Researcher
Ann-Christin Cederborg, Ph.D., Guest Researcher
Phillip W. Esplin, Ed.D., Guest Researcher
Irit Hershkowitz, Ph.D., Guest Researcher
Barry S. Hewlett, Ph.D., Guest Researcher
C. Philip Hwang, Ph.D., Guest Researcher
Kim P. Roberts, Ph.D., Guest Researcher
Jaipaul L. Rooparine, Ph.D., Guest Researcher
Clayton Gillette, Postbaccalaureate Fellow
Melissa Pelaez, Postbaccalaureate Fellow
Esther Sleeth-Keppler, Techical Training Fellow
Katrina Vickerman, Techical Training Fellow
Michael Lamb
 
The primary theme underlying our research is that all developmental processes are powerfully influenced by their social and physical context. As a result, researchers must examine the interface between endogenous and exogenous processes, children’s conceptions and perceptions of their experiences, and the ways in which knowledge of developmental processes can inform social policies and practices.

Facilitating Children’s Accounts of Experienced Events
Lamb, Aldridge, Cederborg, Abbott, Esplin, Guterman, Orbach, Pipe, Roberts, Sternberg, Thierry
One major program of research has involved the development and assessment of techniques for enhancing the informativeness of child witnesses and for evaluating the credibility of their accounts. Most studies in this research program focus on the relationship between interviewer style and the quality of information provided by young children. Several studies have confirmed that open-ended questions elicit longer and more detailed responses than more focused questions. Information elicited in response to open-ended prompts of recall memory is also more likely to be accurate in both analog and forensic contexts, and such findings have strengthened the generalizability of the results obtained in many laboratory studies.

In research conducted in collaboration with investigative agencies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel, we have shown that interviewers can increase the length and richness of children’s accounts, regardless of the children’s ages, by following protocols we designed to probe recall memory and reduce the reliance on more focused questions, which are more likely to elicit erroneous information. Use of the NICHD protocol dramatically increases the amount of information retrieved from four- to 13-year-old alleged victims when using open-ended prompts. Although preschoolers are often deemed incapable of responding to open-ended prompts, our recent research shows that similar proportions of details can be elicited by using open-ended prompts from children as young as four years and as old as 13 years. There are important age differences in the types of information that children provide, however. For example, ongoing analyses of interviews show steady increases with age in the amount of information children provide about the timing of events.

Adaptations of the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol for use with young witnesses and alleged perpetrators are currently being used in the field as well. Preliminary analyses show that young witnesses recall as much information in total, as well as in response to open-ended prompts, as alleged victims do. Suspects tend to be more reluctant, but those who agree to talk provide as much information about their experiences as age mates who are alleged victims. Other field experiments have shown that mental context reinstatement and the introduction of gender-neutral anatomical drawings in the context of protocol-guided interviews also help children provide substantial numbers of additional details about alleged incidents of abuse.

In other ongoing research, we are exploring the extent to which use of the protocol facilitates decisions and interventions designed to prosecute offenders and protect children. Because many children do not disclose suspected abuse when interviewed, however, we are also exploring the characteristics of cases in which children do and do not make allegations or make allegations only reluctantly. We hope to understand the factors that prevent children from reporting abuse that they actually experienced. These studies, too, should help us develop procedures that can be implemented nonsuggestively in forensic settings in order to enhance the sensitivity and specificity of conclusions drawn from investigative interviews.

Another program of research is concerned with the effects of child and spouse abuse on the development of children and adolescents. Independent interviews with mothers, fathers, and children revealed widely divergent accounts of the families’ histories of violence, and these differences complicate efforts to identify links between experiences and outcomes. In both middle childhood and adolescence, however, family violence appears to affect the offsprings’ views of their parents. Children/adolescents felt less closely attached to the parents who had abused them, whereas spouse abuse had no apparent effects on the children’s attachments to their parents.

Adaptation to Nonparental Child Care
Lamb, Abbott, Ahnert, Chuang, Hwang
Another program of research has involved short- and long-term longitudinal studies in Göteborg (Sweden) and Berlin (Germany) of children who have different child care experiences. The longitudinal study in Sweden was initially designed to elucidate the effects of early care arrangements on the development of 145 children recruited in 1982 at an average age of 16 months. Initial analyses indicated that the quality of home care and the quality of alternative care had substantial effects on the children’s verbal abilities, social skills, and personal maturity. These effects diminished as the children moved into the formal educational system and their individual personalities came to affect the adjustment to school. Preliminary analyses revealed no apparent effects of contrasting early care patterns on educational histories and the psychological status of these children at 15 years of age.

Longitudinal analyses revealed substantial stability over time in the children’s personality styles. Of the “Big Five” personality factors, conscientiousness was coherent from toddlerhood, whereas the internal reliabilities of extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience increased over time. Scores on most of these factors were fairly stable over time, but children became less extroverted, more agreeable, and more conscientious with age. Although individual differences were stable, the children also became more ego-controlled over time. Boys’ levels of ego resiliency were more stable over time than girls’; boys became less resilient from middle childhood into midadolescence, whereas girls became more ego-resilient as they entered adolescence.

In the Berlin longitudinal study, we have been measuring the psychophysiological, socioemo-tional, and behavioral tendencies of infants so that we can assess the effects of prior individual differences in behavioral and psychophysio-logical reactivity and infant-mother attachment on the adaptation to out-of-home center care. During an adaptation phase, in which mothers remained in the centers with their toddlers, securely attached infants had markedly lower cortisol levels than insecure infants. When the mothers stopped remaining with their infants, the cortisol responses of the securely attached toddlers were much more dramatic than the responses of the insecurely attached toddlers: on the initial separation days, cortisol levels rose over the first 60 minutes after arrival to levels twice as high as at home. Secure toddlers also fussed/cried upon separation more than insecurely attached toddlers. Cortisol and behavioral markers of distress were correlated in securely attached but not in insecurely attached toddlers. The security of attachment changed in many cases following the onset of child care, but attachments were more likely to become or remain secure when mothers remained longer in the child care facilities with their toddlers. Close examination of individual differences in cardiac reactivity and of the formation of relationships with care providers is now under way.

Subcultural Variations in the Nature of Children’s Early Experiences
Lamb, Ahnert, Fouts, Hewlett, Rooparine
Another project has focused on the description of early interaction in diverse ecological contexts. In each case, extended observations have been conducted to ensure the reliable measurement of individual differences. Comparable day-long observations of parents and infants in Quebec, Germany, the Central African Republic, Costa Rica, and Colombia, as well as in African-American and Euro-American families in the United States, are under way to explore further the effects of culture and context on early interactions.

Extended observations of two- to five-year-old Bofi infants whose families either lived in villages or pursued a nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle revealed that, contrary to widespread beliefs, weaning was seldom a time of parent-offspring conflict. In both groups, the children initiated weaning as they began to eat a variety of foodstuffs, although villagers were more likely to terminate breastfeeding at a predetermined time, whereas foragers let the children set the pace. Weaning was usually associated with pregnancy, and the children’s reactions varied depending on the availability of additional care providers and maternal sensitivity.

Subcultural Variations in Parental and Filial Perceptions and Beliefs
Lamb, Bassen, Chuang, Fouts, Hwang; in collaboration with Cabrera
We have also been investigating ways in which variations among rearing environments (especially as indexed by parental beliefs, values, and practices) affect children’s development. In one line of research, gender differences in the self-perceptions of two cohorts of seventh to twelfth graders are undergoing longitudinal assessment in order to explore the antecedents and correlates of different styles of self-perception in adolescence. Rating themselves in 11 different roles, girls perceived themselves as more affiliative and less negatively affiliative in many roles than did boys. However, gender differences in assertion were not reliable, and girls’ assertiveness did not decline over time. These results contrast with popular claims regarding girls’ “loss of voice” in adolescence. Gender differences were context-specific and were more pronounced in ratings of “myself” as a boy/girl and “myself” with a close same-sex peer. To explore antecedents of these gender differences further, portions of the self-perception battery were completed by a group of Swedish 15-year-olds whose development has been documented systematically since infancy. Analyses of these data are currently under way.


 
 

PUBLICATIONS

  1. Ahnert L, Lamb, ME. The East German child care system: associations with caretaking and caretaking beliefs, children’s early attachment and adjustment. Am Behav Scientist. 2001;44:1843-1863.
  2. Fouts, HN. Central African families: a comparison of Bofi farmer and forager families. In: Roopnarine JL, Gielen UP, eds. Families in global perspective. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, in press.
  3. Fouts HN. Social contexts of weaning: the importance of cross-cultural studies. In: Gielen UP, Roopnarine JL, eds. Childhood and adolescence in cross-cultural perspective. Westport CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, in press.
  4. Gobbo C, Mega C, Pipe M-E. Does the nature of the experience influence children’s suggestibility? A study of children’s event memory. J Exp Child Psychol. 2002;81:502-530.
  5. Hewlett BS, Lamb ME. Integrating evolution, culture and developmental psychology: explaining caregiver-infant proximity and responsiveness in Central Africa and the USA. In: Keller H, Poortinga YH, Schölmerich A, eds. Between culture and biology: perspectives on ontogenetic development. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002;241-269.
  6. Jones CH, Pipe M-E. How quickly do children forget events? A systematic study of children’s event reports as a function of delay. Appl Cognit Psychol. 2002;16:1-14.
  7. Lamb ME. Infant-father attachments and their impact on child development. In: Tamis-LeMonda CS, Cabrera N, eds. Handbook of father involvement: multidisciplinary perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002;93-117.
  8. Lamb ME. Noncustodial fathers and their children. In: Tamis-LeMonda CS, Cabrera N, eds. Handbook of father involvement: multidisciplinary perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002;169-184.
  9. Lamb ME, Ahnert L. [Institutional care contexts and their developmental relevance to young children]. In: Keller H, ed. Handbook of child development (3rd edition). Bern: Huber, in press [German].
  10. Lamb ME, Bornstein MH, Teti DM. Development in infancy (4th edition). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002.
  11. Lamb ME, Chuang SS, Hwang CP. Internal reliability, temporal stability, and correlates of individual differences in paternal involvement: a 15-year longitudinal study in Sweden. In: Day RD, Lamb ME, eds. Re-conceptualizing and measuring father involvement. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, in press.
  12. Lamb ME, Chuang SS, Wessels H, Broberg AG, Hwang CP. Emergence and construct validation of the big five factors in early childhood: a longitudinal analysis of their ontogeny in Sweden. Child Dev. 2002;73:1517-1524.
  13. Lamb ME, Sternberg KJ, Orbach Y, Hershkowitz I, Horowitz D, Esplin PW. The effects of intensive training and ongoing supervision on the quality of investigative interviews with alleged sex abuse victims. Appl Dev Sci. 2002;6:114-125.
  14. Leyendecker BL, Harwood RL, Lamb ME, Schölmerich A. Mothers’ socialization goals and evaluations of desirable and undesirable everyday situations in two diverse cultural groups. Int J Behav Dev. 2002;26:248-258.
  15. Orbach Y, Lamb ME, Sternberg KJ, Williams JMG, Dawud-Noursi S. The effect of being a victim or witness of family violence on the retrieval of autobiographical memories. Child Abuse Negl. 2001;25:1427-1437.
  16. Pipe M-E, Salmon K. What children bring to the interview context: individual differences in children’s event reports. In: Eisen ML, Quas JA, Goodman GS, eds. Memory and suggestibility in the forensic interview. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002;235-261.
  17. Thierry KL, Spence MJ. Source-monitoring training facilitates preschoolers’ eyewitness memory performance. Dev Psychol. 2002;38:428-437.

COLLABORATORS
Natasha Cabrera, Ph.D., University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D., University of Illinois, Chicago, IL