Parental Manipulation of the Behavior of Normal and Deviant Children

Abstract

The present study examined the ability of parents to bias home-observation data by influencing their child's behavior in socially desirable and undesirable directions. Parents of 12 deviant and 12 non-deviant boys, aged 4-8, were given the response set to present their child as "good", "bad", and usual (normal) during 6 45-minute observations of family interaction. Deviant and non-deviant children showed significantly more deviant behavior under the bad condition as compared with normal, whereas their good and normal conditions did not differ. Parent positive and negative behaviors were related to changes in child deviant behavior for the deviant sample; parent positive and commanding behaviors were related to changes in child deviant behavior for the nondeviant sample. Parent self-report of behavior change was generally consistent with the observation data. The results suggested implications for naturalistic observations of families and for child behavior change interventions.

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