Center for the Study of Family Violence and Sexual Assault, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, United States.
Center for the Study of Family Violence and Sexual Assault, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, United States.
Child Abuse Negl. 2017 May;67:419-428. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.02.005. Epub 2017 Feb 16.
Parents' evaluations of children are believed to be a cognitive contributor to their subsequent child-directed harsh or physically abusive behaviors. The current research examined whether parents' (N=100) evaluations of children were moderated by either (a) the child behavior on which the evaluation was based and (b) parents' measured risk for child physical abuse. The study also explored whether parents' evaluations of children were related to their tendencies to symbolically harm their child. The current study also used a novel method to indirectly assess parents' evaluations of children: A modified Affect Misattribution Procedure. Contrary to a priori expectations, negative evaluations of children were stronger for parents who were at low risk, relative to high risk, for child physical abuse. Nonetheless, we observed that high-risk parents were more likely than low-risk parents to inflict symbolic harm onto their child. In an exploratory analysis we observed that parents who formed more overall negative evaluations of children engaged in more symbolic harm to their child. Although high-risk parents were more likely to symbolically harm their child than low-risk parents, this effect does not seem to be due to high-risk parents' negative child evaluations from negative child behaviors.
父母对孩子的评价被认为是其随后对孩子进行严厉或身体虐待行为的认知因素。本研究考察了父母（N=100）对孩子的评价是否受到以下两个因素的调节：（a）评价所依据的孩子行为，以及（b）父母对孩子身体虐待的测量风险。该研究还探讨了父母对孩子的评价是否与他们象征性伤害孩子的倾向有关。本研究还使用了一种新颖的方法来间接评估父母对孩子的评价：一种改良的情感归因程序。与事先的预期相反，对于儿童身体虐待风险低的父母，他们对孩子的负面评价比风险高的父母更强。尽管如此，我们发现高风险的父母比低风险的父母更有可能对孩子进行象征性的伤害。在一项探索性分析中，我们观察到对孩子形成更全面负面评价的父母对孩子进行更多的象征性伤害。虽然高风险的父母比低风险的父母更有可能对孩子进行象征性的伤害，但这种影响似乎并不是由于高风险的父母对孩子的负面行为产生了负面的孩子评价。
