FAMILY INTERACTION IDENTIFYING MALTREATING FAMILIES

The proposed study will extend previous work on family interaction completed by the Principal Investigator to the study of maltreating families. Child maltreatment exacts enormous human and financial costs each year. Maltreated children have been shown to exhibit deficits in cognitive functioning, problems with peer interaction, poor school performance, and higher rates of emotional problems than non-maltreated controls. Despite contributions by family systems theory to the study of normal child development, the study of child maltreatment has not benefitted from a similar application of family systems theory and methods. Fifty maltreating families identified through Social Service reports (25 abusive, 25 neglectful) and 50 control families matched on SES, ethnicity, and family composition will be recruited. For all maltreating families the affected child will be between 3-5 years of age. Families with children between 3-5 years will be selected because children this age are developmentally ready to make increasing demands for autonomous functioning, presenting special challenges to maltreating families. All families will be videotaped in their homes completing two interaction tasks- a family interaction task and a parent-child teaching task. In the family interaction task, caregiver(s) and children will be asked to work together taking turns adding blocks to build a single house. In the parent-child teaching task, parents will be asked to help their child complete puzzles too difficult for the child only if the child needs help. Coding of these videotaped interactions will be accomplished using a revision of an existing global coding system for family interaction developed by the Principal Investigator. Codes will focus on levels of family organization/disorganization, the negotiation of conflict, and the fostering of autonomous behaviors by .parents for children. Identified differences between maltreating and control families will inform the theoretical understanding of child maltreatment, as well as suggesting intervention strategies at the family level to address extreme parental dysfunction. Secondary analyses will also explore difference within the maltreating group between abusive and neglectful families. The proposed study will be conducted through Mt. Hope Family Center, a center for research, training, and intervention in developmental psychopathology with a rich history of studying child maltreatment.