International Journal of Behavioral Development

The International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development observed its 25th anniversary in 1994. Circumstances leading to the establishment of the Society in 1969 are recounted in this article, along with the aims and objectives of the founding members. A complete history of Society activities, including meetings, workshops, publications, and special events, is provided along with both retrospective and prospective comment.

This study investigates the structure and development of quantitative thought in Greece and India. A total of 297 Indian subjects and 269 Greek subjects, aged from 10 to 16 years, were examined by a battery addressing their ability to execute arithmetic operations, a battery addressing their proportional reasoning, and a battery addressing algebraic reasoning. The items in each battery addressed four developmental levels. Confirmatory factor analysis showed, as predicted, that the same model is able to account for the performance of both cultures. Some differences were observed in the relative strength of the various abilities. However, the developmental inter-patterning of abilities was generally the same in the two cultures. There were no differences in capacity-dependent sequences but there were some differences in strategy-dependent sequences. These findings are discussed in the context of our theory of cognitive development.

The study examined the relations between mother-child and father-child interaction and child misbehaviour during a naturalistic family observation in the home. The families were middle class and nonclinic, and the target child was an eldest boy or girl aged 6-7 years. The main focus was on positive parenting in the forms of warmth/affection and positive involvement with the child. These two forms of positive parenting were negatively correlated with child misbehaviour. Parental warmth/affection was most strongly associated with daughters' misbehaviour, and positive involvement with sons' misbehaviour. The links between parenting behaviours and child misbehaviour rates were similar for mothers and fathers. It was argued that co-operative child behaviour may be associated with positive emotional states arising from positive parenting behaviour. The characteristics of the sample were considered important when assessing the prominence of positive parenting behaviours.

The primary focus of this study was the assessment of children's social competence in relation to two aspects of the mother-child relationshipattachment security and maternal directiveness. Specifically, we expected concurrent child-mother attachment security to be positively correlated with children's positive social engagement and social problem-solving skills and negatively related to aggression, whereas maternal directiveness was predicted to show the opposite pattern of correlations. Subjects were 111 mothers and their 4-year-old target children, each paired with a same-sex, same-age unfamiliar control child. Maternal directiveness was assessed in co-operative task and free-play sessions involving the target child, target mother, and control child. The target child's social engagement and social problem-solving skills were measured during dyadic free play with the control child. Multiple regression analyses assessed relative contributions of maternal directiveness and attachment security to the prediction of child behaviour with the peer. Attachment security predicted positive social engagement. Maternal directiveness was associated only with aspects of the children's social problem-solving. These results support previous research linking child-mother attachment security, maternal control patterns and children's social competence, although our findings showed the importance of separating the influences of attachment quality and the socialisation aspects of parenting.

There is a persistent need to find usable ways of measuring social network and support for children. Up to now virtually nothing is known about the social network from the child's viewpoint. In order to evaluate whether drawing a structured social network map (the Five Field Map) could serve as a way of elucidating important aspects of the social world of children, the maps of different samples of children were studied. In a school class of 27 children, aged 11 years, a test-retest study was undertaken. The essential aspects of the map showed good stability over time. The map was compared with other instruments of social interaction in different samples. Predicted associations were found in the nonclinical samples. Aspects of the map measuring dissatisfaction, negative contacts, and conflicts were found to be associated with behaviour problems. The closeness factor of the map and reported dissatisfaction and conflicts differentiated a normal group of children living in single-parent families from a similar group of children with psychiatric problems. The Five Field Map contributes important knowledge about how children perceive their social world. It can thus be considered a suitable instrument to describe the social network from the child's point of view.

Central to a concept of culture is the expectation that different peoples possess different ideas and behave in different ways with respect to child rearing. In this study, we investigated ideas that Argentine, French, and US American mothers hold about their own and their husbands' actual child rearing, as well as what they consider to be ideal child rearing, in three parenting domains: social, didactic, and limit setting. For each domain, we analysed mothers' reports of their actual behaviours and of their husbands' actual behaviours; mothers' ideal expectations of their own and their husbands' behaviours; and mothers' dissonance with respect to parenting (i.e. the extent to which mothers' actual and their husbands' actual behaviours each agrees with mothers' ideal expectations for themselves and for their husbands). The results showed consistent parent, country, as well as parent-by-country effects, interpretable in terms of overarching cultural beliefs. The study of parents' ideas contributes to understanding why and how parents behave the way they do toward children, and provides insights into the broader social context of child development.

After describing the background and current state of historical interests among Japanese developmentalists, this article stresses the value of the direct participation of developmentalists in historical study. Japanese historical materials on childrearing were analysed from a developmental point of view and their relation to cultural, social, and economic contexts in five historical epochs was examined. The results revealed historical continuity of basic beliefs and values in Japanese ethnotheories on childrearing and human development, and their relation to certain structural and functional aspects of Japanese society was demonstrated. A new term, the "ethnopsychological pool of ideas" (EPI), is presented to denote a reservoir of knowledge, practices, sentiments, and values that maintains diverse components across historical periods. The ethnopsychological pool of early modem Japan contained divergent key components based on which a few schools of modem academic theories on child development can be constructed. The analysis suggests that theories of childrearing draw upon naive psychology, expert advice, and scientific psychology, and are mutually related as social constructions based on the ethnopsychological pool of ideas of a particular society.

Since the publication of Aries's ground-breaking book in 1960, an exponentially increasing number of studies on the history of childhood and the family has been published. A critical review of this historical research however, shows that there are many serious theoretical and methodological weaknesses. It is argued that the empirical analytical research tradition of developmental psychology could be applied fruitfully to solve at least some of the problems. This is demonstrated by the analysis of paintings in which children are depicted. Based on Lorenz's theory of the "Kindchenschema" (child schema), ethological research demonstrated which anatomical proportions trigger the innate releasing mechanisms for affection and nurturing in humans. These proportions were used to devise an instrument for assessing historical change in the depiction of "childishness". This instrument was then used in a first study of 100 Dutch and Flemish paintings from the 15th to the 20th centuries. A correlation coefficient of 0.60 between recency of the paintings and childishness scores was found. These data support Aries's hypothesis that, since the end of the Middle Ages, there is a continuous increase in childishness in the cultural representation of children, such as paintings. This study discusses how this empirical approach to paintings could be generalised to other historical sources. The paper concludes with a general discussion of the desirability of developing a "historical developmental psychology", i.e. of framing an empirical developmental psychology in a cultural-historical context.

This study uses retrospective life history data to investigate the developmental implications of the socio-cultural meaning of father absence, as expressed in the family formation of German men who are members of two birth cohorts, 1929-31 and 1939-41. Mass mobilisation for military service during World War II exposed large numbers of these men to father absence for an extended time span, but it did so at different ages in their lives. The developmental consequences are specified by the life stage principle: Social change has different effects for people of different ages. However, the normative character of father absence during the war may have diminished this difference and assigned greater risk to the lives of men who experienced father absence before or after World War II. The data analyses consistently support the historical hypothesis. Only men who encounter father absence before or after World War II show a pronounced delay in the transition to parenthood. Father absences that were war-related actually accelerated the transition of men to fatherhood according to event history analyses.

Sudden forms of drastic social change have attracted the attention of developmentalists in recent years through their compelling human consequences. Examples include economic depressions, wars, and political transformations. This study focuses on a less visible but no less profound social change and its developmental implications for children, the declining rural population. Using a sample of Iowa fathers (USA) who grew up on farms, we compared the family experience and children of men who followed either the path of farming or of nonfarm employment. Farm children experience greater social inter-dependency with other family members, and this reinforces their feeling of social significance-they mattered for others and also shared responsibility for others. As might be expected, farm youth acquired stronger attachments to their local community and family which were expressed in subsequent agricultural activities and goals. The antecedents and correlates of rural preferences begin to tell the story of rural farm continuity and change in the next generation.