From a cognitive information processing approach, abusive and neglectful parents are unable to understand the signals or states of the child, interpret these signals correctly, select and implement adequate responses... [ view full abstract ]
From a cognitive information processing approach, abusive and neglectful parents are unable to understand the signals or states of the child, interpret these signals correctly, select and implement adequate responses (Crittenden, 1993; Milner, 1993). In this model, parents’ cognitive schemas strongly influence the way they perceive and act towards their children (Bugental & Goodnow, 1997; McGillicudy-DeLisi & Sigel, 1995; Sigel, 1985) and are likely to influence parental perceptions about their child’s needs and behaviors, and to determine the subsequent information processing stages (Milner, 1993).
Social cognition research has been giving a vast contribution for the study of cognitive representations and impression formation, emphasizing that people share common implicit personality theories (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954). Applying this knowledge to the parenting context, the present study intends to explore how maternal cognitive representations about parenting are organized in a multi-dimensional space, comparing mothers referred to child protection services and mothers with no such reference. Specifically, we sought to replicate the original two-dimensional personality structure (social and intellectual dimensions) obtained by Rosenberg, Nelson, and Vivekananthan (1968; see also warmth and competence Cuddy et al., 2002), as well as dominance and trustworthiness (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008).
In a free description task, a sample of 70 mothers - half referred to the child protection services and other half non-referred – freely generated parental attributes (i.e., words immediately associated with parenting). The most frequent characteristics were selected. In a second stage another sample of 70 mothers (also referred and non-referred) performed a grouping task of the attributes according their probability of co-occurrence in the same mother. The results were analyzed using the multidimensional scaling technique (e.g., Rosenberg et al., 1968) in order to identify the underlying dimensions of maternal representations.
As expected, the data revealed a good adjustment in a two-dimensional configuration, as proposed by Rosenberg and colleagues (1968), with both intellectual and social dimensions and their respective positive and negative poles. This replication is particularly important because it refers to “mothers” and not people in general. Additionally, it was obtained from a specific population of referred and non-referred mothers (instead of undergraduate students). Regarding the comparison between the two groups, referred mothers showed a higher density in negative clusters than the non-referred mothers, which may suggest that referred mothers have a representation of parenting more homogeneous and less differentiated.
The perceptive map that this technique enables allows representing and analyzing how maternal attributes are organized in the multi-dimensional space. Given that mental representations influence behavior, the knowledge of these structures is likely to contribute to a better understanding of parental practices. Further research is crucial to understand the cognitive factors underlying child maltreatment and neglect.
