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Biomedical subjects

Cynthia L Smith

Publications and source records attributed to Cynthia L Smith.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

Children's coping strategies and coping efficacy: relations to parent socialization, child adjustment, and familial alcoholism.

The relations of children's coping strategies and coping efficacy to parent socialization and child adjustment were examined in a sample of school-age children that included families in which some of the grandparents and/or parents had an alcoholism diagnosis. Parents and older children reported on the children's coping strategies; parents reported on their parenting behavior; and teachers reported on children's externalizing and internalizing problems. Measures of parent socialization were associated with parents' and children's reports of active coping strategies and parents' reports of both support-seeking coping and coping efficacy. Some of these relations were moderated by familial alcohol status. Children higher in parent-reported active/support-seeking coping and coping efficacy were rated lower in teacher-reported externalizing and internalizing adjustment problems. The findings were consistent with the view that active/support-seeking coping and coping efficacy mediated the association of parent socialization to children's psychological adjustment and that this relation was sometimes moderated by parental alcohol status.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

The Mammalian Phenotype Ontology as a tool for annotating, analyzing and comparing phenotypic information.

The Mammalian Phenotype (MP) Ontology enables robust annotation of mammalian phenotypes in the context of mutations, quantitative trait loci and strains that are used as models of human biology and disease. The MP Ontology supports different levels and richness of phenotypic knowledge and flexible annotations to individual genotypes. It continues to develop dynamically via collaborative input from research groups, mutagenesis consortia, and biological domain experts. The MP Ontology is currently used by the Mouse Genome Database and Rat Genome Database to represent phenotypic data.

Animals↗

Predicting stability and change in toddler behavior problems: contributions of maternal behavior and child gender.

This study examined the stability and continuity of early-identified behavior problems and the factors associated with this stability. Children and their mothers (N=125) were seen when the children were 2 and 4 years of age. Maternal reports of child externalizing behavior and laboratory observations of child noncompliance were stable from age 2 to age 4. Early externalizing behaviors decreased over time; however, child noncompliance in the laboratory did not. Although few associations were found between maternal positive behavior and child behavior problems, maternal controlling behavior was related to increases in child behavior problems, particularly at high levels of both prior noncompliance and prior maternal control. Child noncompliance was predictive of increases in maternal controlling behavior over time.

Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorder↗

The relations of effortful control and ego control to children's resiliency and social functioning.

The relations of effortful control and ego control to children's (mean age = 137 months) resiliency, social status, and social competence were examined concurrently (Time 3) and over time. Adults reported on the constructs, and a behavioral measure of persistence was obtained. At Time 3, resiliency mediated the unique relations of both effortful and reactive control to social status, and effortful control directly predicted socially appropriate behavior. Negative emotionality moderated the relations of ego and effortful control to socially appropriate behavior. When levels of the variables 2 years prior were accounted for, all relations held at Time 3 except that effortful control did not predict resiliency (even though it was the stronger predictor at Time 3) and ego control directly predicted socially appropriate behavior.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

The relations of effortful control and reactive control to children's externalizing problems: a longitudinal assessment.

In this study, we examined the role of negative emotionality as a moderator of the relations of effortful control and overcontrol (versus undercontrol) with children's externalizing problem behaviors; we also examined the longitudinal relations among these variables. Teachers' and parents' reports of children's negative emotionality, effortful control, overcontrol and externalizing problem behaviors were obtained at T1 (N=199; M age=89.51 months) and again 2 (T2) and 4 years (T3) later. In addition, children's effortful control was assessed with an observed measure of persistence. In a T3 concurrent structural equation model, effortful control, but not overcontrol, was negatively related to children's T3 externalizing problem behaviors. In regression analyses, the negative relation between T3 effortful control and externalizing problem behaviors was strongest at high levels of T3 negative emotionality. In the best-fitting longitudinal structural equation model, both T1 effortful control and T1 overcontrol negatively predicted externalizing problems at T1, whereas T3 effortful control (but not T3 overcontrol) was significantly negatively related to T3 externalizing problem behaviors when controlling for T1 externalizing problem behaviors.

Affect↗