Child Development and Family Relationships Lab
Ongoing Projects
the arrival of the second-born.
This study follow both normative as well as at-risk population, namely families subjected to chronic stress due to residence in an armed conflict zone of Gazza vicinity. The study will place great emphasis on the quality of parenting suggesting that parenting will play an important role in the family strength following a life-changing event of the birth of a second child. In addition, I suspect that growing in an armed conflict zone is a risk factor for children and parents and that parenting quality can moderate its effect as a resilience factor for adaptive development.
The BGU Reflective Parenting Project: Enhancing Reflective Functioning among Parents and Metaplot in the Negev
The aim of this project is to enhance reflective functioning in Israeli caregivers (parents and metaplot). We will conduct workshops designed to enhance caregivers’ abilities to understand their children or the children they care for; these workshops will also help caregivers develop efficient coping skills for daily situations, such as a child’s difficult behavior, separation, conflicts, and trauma. We will focus on increasing confidence in parenting/caregiving and strengthening caregiver-child relationships. Using an "assessment as intervention" model, we will conduct multiple parenting and metaplot workshops using the reflective parenting program developed at the Center for Reflective Community in Los Angeles, CA (USA). Assessments will be conducted before, during, and after the intervention. We are interested in examining the change in parents’/metaplot’s reflective functioning, their sense of competence as childcare-providers, and their levels of stress and well-being. In addition, we will examine changes in child behaviors and in the parent-child/metapelet-child relationship.
The BGU Reflective Parenting Project: Enhancing Reflective Functioning among Parents and Metaplot in the Negev
The aim of this project is to enhance reflective functioning in Israeli caregivers (parents and metaplot). We will conduct workshops designed to enhance caregivers’ abilities to understand their children or the children they care for; these workshops will also help caregivers develop efficient coping skills for daily situations, such as a child’s difficult behavior, separation, conflicts, and trauma. We will focus on increasing confidence in parenting/caregiving and strengthening caregiver-child relationships. Using an "assessment as intervention" model, we will conduct multiple parenting and metaplot workshops using the reflective parenting program developed at the Center for Reflective Community in Los Angeles, CA (USA). Assessments will be conducted before, during, and after the intervention. We are interested in examining the change in parents’/metaplot’s reflective functioning, their sense of competence as childcare-providers, and their levels of stress and well-being. In addition, we will examine changes in child behaviors and in the parent-child/metapelet-child relationship.
Parental Reflective Functioning and Parent-Child Relationship among Parents of Children with ADHD
Parental Reflective Function (PRF) is the parent's awareness of thoughts and feelings of himself/herself and his/her child, a capacity that is vital for predicting behavior, self-control, emotional regulation and interpersonal relationships.
The study's aim is to understand the factors associated with fathers’ and mothers’ PRF among parents of children with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). More specifically, we examine whether and how factors related to child's characteristics, parent's characteristics and context variable are associated with PRF of fathers and mothers to 7-11 years old children diagnosed with ADHD, in comparison to an age-matched comparison group of parents to children without ADHD. The study strives to broaden existing knowledge regarding PRF development by examining the role of child's characteristics and context variables that could be associated with PRF. Special attention is given to the examination of PRF among fathers.
Parental Mentalization and Executive Functions
Parental mentalization refers to parents’ ability to reflect on their child's mental states and on their relationship with their child, while regarding their child as an independent psychological agent. This parental capacity is highly related to the quality of the parent-child relationship and to children’s cognitive and socioemotional development. Although this capacity has been studied extensively, little is known about the cognitive basis of parental mentalization – what are the cognitive processes underlying parents’ ability to represent their child’s mind? In two studies, we examine the role of executive functions (EFs), general-purpose processes that enable goal directed behavior, including working memory, inhibition and task-set shifting, in parental mentalization. These studies are being conducted in collaborations with Dr. Yoav Kessler and his Working Memory lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
1. Associations Between Parental Mentalization Measures and Parents’ Executive Functions among Parents of Children Born Pre- and Full-term
We examine the role of EFs in parental mentalization in a sample of families participating in the Preterm Early Development Study (PEDS), in which we follow families of children born pre- and full-term from birth to preschool, in four time-points: birth, 6 months, 12 months and 66 months (corrected age in the preterm group).
As part of this study, we examine the association between parents’ EFs (collected using computerized cognitive tasks, such as the n-back task) and two age-appropriate measures of parental mentalization in two different time-points: interactional mind-mindedness at the age of 6 months, and parental reflective functioning (as assessed via the Parent Development Interview) at the age of 66 months. We also examine whether and how other child-related variables modulate these links.
It should be noted that as part of the Preterm Early Development Study (PEDS), we also examine the process by which infant characteristics (e.g., temperament), parental characteristics (e.g., emotional distress) and the quality of the parent-child relationship (e.g., mother-child, father-child, and mother-father-child interactions) act together in predicting developmental outcomes at ages 12 months and 66 months, including cognitive and social development.
We have recently finished collecting data of the last time-point, and are currently coding materials at the lab.
2. Mental-event Segmentation: How do Parents Track Infants’ Mental States?
As part of the PEDS, we found an association between mothers’ working memory updating ability and their appropriate mentalization (measured using the interactional mind-mindedness coding system): mothers who had higher working memory updating abilities made more appropriate mind-related comments when interacting with their infant (at 6 months). Working memory updating enables one to track relevant information in the environment. When encountering an ongoing stream of information, working is used for event segmentation (e.g., Kurby & Zacks, 2008) – division of what is happening into meaningful units. Updating of the content of working memory is required during event boundaries, when one event has ended and another one begins.
We are currently starting a new project designed to examine whether working memory updating’s role in parental mentalization is through event-segmentation, and specifically – whether parents with high updating abilities tend to segment their infant’s behavior in terms of underlying mental-states.
In search of "the Bedouin adaptive adult": Developmental goals of mothers and fathers from the Bedouin society of the Negev
The Bedouins of the Negev are a distinguished minority group in the Israeli society. They live in the south region of Israel and are known to be a formerly-nomadic society. This research investigates parenting and child development from the Bedouin-cultural perspective.The “adaptive adult”, a term describing the images parents have of the adults they wish their children to become (Roer-Strier & Rosenthal, 2001), was found to be related to parenting and child’s behavior. Guided by this idea, we set up this study, to explore the adaptive adult among the Bedouin population in the Negev. Applying both quantitative and qualitative means, we explore the images of adaptive adult, while examining the eco-cultural factors that may be related to these images. Specifically we examine how different variables, such as child gender, parental level of education, place of settlement (Bedouin towns Vs. rural villages) and parental acculturation style are related to the adaptive adult images of Bedouin mothers and fathers.
Early Feeding Disorders Study:
1. Mother-Child and Father-Child Play
In this study we examine three main domains: First, parental playfulness among fathers and mothers, and its contribution to the father-child dyadic relationship. Second, we examine how verbal communication (language use), is related to the parent-child dyadic relationship and to explore similarities and differences in verbal communication between mothers and fathers. Third, we study the differences in parental playfulness, and parental use of language between parents in the FD and the comparison groups.
2. Parental reflective functioning of parents to children with a feeding disorder
In this study we examine parental language use during feeding and play interaction with their children, looking for evidence for parent's proclivity to treat their young child as an individual with a mind. We look for parent's use of "mind-related" comments in an appropriate and in non-attuned manner while interacting with their children, in order to establish how mind-minded they are. We examine parents' mind-mindedness in two experimental groups: parents of children with and without feeding disorders.
3. Longitudinal Study Examining the Effects of Infant Feeding Difficulties on Children During Their School-Age Years
Our current research aims to follow-up families who participated 8-11 years ago in a study examining parent-child relationship and feeding interaction during infancy, among families of infants with Feeding Disorders (FD) and Typically Developed (TD) infants. The proposed study will enable the understanding of the processes of risk and resilience in the development of adolescents who had FD during their early childhood. The current study aims to fill the gap in knowledge about the connection between FD and parent-child relations during infancy and antecedences, mediators, and moderators for ED during adolescence. The follow-up information will be collected from reports completed by multi-reporters (mothers, fathers, and the children themselves). This will enable us to investigate the risk and resilience factors from both the parent’s and the child’s perspectives.