Correlates of parental teaching strategies in families of children evidencing normal and atypical development

JOURNAL OF APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY i 3s 215-234 (1992)

Correlates of Parental Teaching Strategies in Families of Children Evidencing Normal and Atypical

Development ANN V. MCGILLICUDDY-DE LliSl

Lafayette College

Eighty-six families with a 6-year-old (target) child participated in a study of the relation between children's competency levels and parents' teaching strategies. Of these families, 44 included a target child who had been diagnosed as communication handicapped (CH) by service professionals in the community and was currenHy enrolled in an intervention program. The remaining families consisted of children who had no known disabilities or handicaps. Using a family-systems approach, it was hypothesized that the intellectual ability of both the target children and their siblings would be related to teaching behaviors evidenced by mothers and fathers during interactions with the target child. When the target child evidenced a communication handicap, however, it was hypothesized that family dynamics would be altered. As a result, the target child's ability level was expected to be more strongly related to the parents' behaviors when the target child was communication handicapped than when the child was nonhandicapped. The siblings' contributions to parental teaching strategies were expected to be diminished when there was a child in the family who evidenced atypical development, as in the case of a communication handicap. Correlational analyses and path analyses revealed these differences in patterns of relations obtained for families with and without a CH child, and provided some support for a systems approach to the study of determinants of parents' teaching strategies.

This study focuses on how mothers and fathers develop teaching strategies for use with young school-age children. Most attempts to understand individual differences in parental teaching strategies have focused on characteristics of the family unit, such as social class, family size, and birth spacing, or on characteristics of the individual parents, such as gender, age, and so forth, or on characteristics of the child, such as gender. For example, middle-class parents have been found to use inquiry teaching strategies more often than working-class parents (Sigel, 1982), parents with smaller families have been found to exert

Data reported in this study were collected under NIH R01MH32301 granted to Educational Testing Service. The author is indebted to Donald Rock for statistical assistance and advice, as well as to Irving Sigel for his input during all phases of this research.

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Ann V. McGillicuddy-De Lisi, Department of Psychology, Lafayette College, Easton, PA 18042.

215

216 MCGILLICUDDY-DE LISI

more press for achievement (Marjoribanks, 1979), fathers have been reported to use more statements to directly control children's behavior than mothers (McLaughlin, Schulz, & White, 1980), and mothers of sons were found to be more demanding during teaching tasks than mothers of daughters (McGillicuddy- De Lisi, 1988). Such studies have consistently indicated that individual differences in parental teaching behaviors are linked to such personal and descriptive characteristics.

Recent conceptualizations of the family as a system provide some insights into the processes through which such individual differences in parenting behavior may arise. Within this approach, the behavior of individual members of the family are affected by all other members of the family (Belsky, 1981). The parent does not come to a teaching interaction context with a teaching style that per- vades behavior throughout parenthood. Rather, the behavior of the parent reflects the history of the parent with that child, with other children in the family, and with the other parent.

Over two decades ago, Bell (1968) pointed out that children affect parents' behavior. For the most part, however, research has continued to remain focused on effects of parent-child interactions on children although recognizing the bidirectional nature of the relationship (Belsky, 1984). Relatively little attention has been directed toward understanding the nature of parent-child interactions in terms of potential impact on the parent's development (Minuchin, 1985). The focus of the present study will be on potential determinants of parents' behavior rather than on the impact of those behaviors on children's development. It is recognized that reciprocal influences exist between parents and children, as they do in most social interactions, but the lack of information regarding antecedents of parental behavior is the primary impetus for this study (Russell & Russell, 1987). In the present study, two correlates of parental teaching behaviors were examined in relation to parents' teaching behavior using a family-systems approach: the child's level of ability and the ability level of the child's sibling.

Child's Ability In spite of the lack of attention to the child's ability as a source of variability in parental teaching behaviors, there is some data which suggest that adults tend to alter teaching strategies in accordance with children's ability. For example, parents' use of scaffolding, in which parents provide help to the child that is com- mensurate with the child's level of performance, is consistent with the notion that nare~nt~' te.a~hin~ behaviors are affected bv abilitv levels of the child (Fischer &


tionship between children's competency and parents' teaching behaviors would not be due to the greater impact of the atypical child on the family per se, but to a greater impact of the disability on the behaviors that are elicited from any other individual, including the parents, who might engage in a teaching interaction with that child. This would also account for the stronger and significant relation

PARENTAL TEACHING STRATEGIES 217

child. Parental teaching behaviors during interactions with young school-age children were chosen because there is a need to extend knowledge of determinants of an important aspect of the parent role, that is, teaching, to an age range beyond infancy and the young preschool years (Russell & Russell, 1987). Par- ents' behaviors are seen as the result of their development as teachers of their own children, which has occurred through the course of a history of interactions with them (see Hinde & Stevenson-Hinde, 1987, for a review of this position). Such a family-systems perspective, in which each family member has contributed to the parent's behavior as a teacher over the course of a history of interactions with one another, requires an independent assessment of the children's characteristics that are likely to be associated with parent teaching behaviors.

Sibling's Ability Level Within the systems perspective, parents' behaviors are not viewed as the result of a personality style, nor solely as responses to stimuli, such as the child's behavior during the immediate interaction. Instead, the parent's history with other family members, such as the child's siblings, and within subsystems, such as the marital relationship, that exist within the family also affect the parent's behavior. Pre- vious research with a subset of families who participated in the present study revealed significant associations between the marital relationship of the parents and their teaching behavior during interactions with their child (Brody, Pel- legrini, & Sigel, 1986). The role of the siblings of the child in relation to parental teaching behavior has been neglected, however (cf. Kreppner, Paulsen, & Schuetze, 1982).

Information concerning a sibling of the child who is the direct target or focus of the study is as important as information about the target child. For example, the mother's behavior during interactions with the target child is influenced not only by the child's current behavior, which is readily apparent to an observer, but also by information the mother has gained through prior interactions with the child's sibling, through observations of the child interacting with the father and with the sibling, as well as through her own prior interactions with the child. Studies conducted more than a decade ago revealed that maternal teaching behavior differed when the child had an older sister, although that older sibling was not present in the room when the mother interacted with the target child (Cicirelli, 1976).

Thus, the systems perspective extends the association between intellectual ability and teaching beyond the level of the parent-child dyad. The history of successful and unsuccessful teaching encounters among all family members have contributed to each parent's behaviors as a teacher of the individual child. The result is that a parent's teaching behaviors in any single context should be related to the intellectual ability of other children in the family as well as to that of the target child, and to the spouse's teaching behaviors as well. The teaching behaviors of both fathers and mothers with one (target) child in the family were


therefore investigated in relation to the intellectual ability of the target child who was observed in interaction with the parent and in relation to the intellectual ability of that child's sibling.

Communicative Status of the Target Child Within systems theory there are instances, however, when a particular individual in the system wields greater regulatory power than others over interactions and relationships that exist within the system. For example, a child's problems may keep the parents focused on that child rather than on other conflicts, such as marital problems (see Minuchin, 1985). There are several indications that a similar pattern exists in which a child who evidences atypical development has a greater effect than other members on family-interaction patterns, even when the family remains functional. For example, Farber and Jenne (1963) reported that the structure of interactions among family members shifts when one child is severely retarded. The atypically developing child is treated and behaves as though he or she was the youngest child in the family constellation, regardless of his or her actual ordinal position. In a similar vein, Wasserman, Allen, and Solomon (1985) report that children with physical handicaps are affected not only by their disability, but by the effect their disability has on their caregivers. They report that mothers are very specific in the manner in which they accommo- date to their children's competencies, resulting in particular patterns of differences in parenting. Finally, many studies of children evidencing a wide variety of developmental disturbances have reported an impact on attitudes or behaviors of other family members (e.g., Blackard & Barsh, 1982; Field, 1980; Mink, 1987; Senapati & Hayes, 1988).

These findings are consistent with principles of family-systems theory. The atypically developing child may become the focus of the family, playing a larger regulatory role than siblings as family functioning becomes defined in large part by the capabilities of the child who is deviant or in need of special attention. Where concern with the impact of the child on parental teaching strategies is an issue, little research has been conducted on school-age children evidencing a developmental problem. It is expected, however, that a child evidencing atypical development would have greater impact on the development of parents as teachers than their normally developing siblings would. Teaching behaviors of mothers and fathers were therefore examined in two samples of families: families with a child evidencing a diagnosed disability, and families with children with no known disabilities or handicaps.

METHOD

Subjects One hundred twenty families with two parents and a 6-year-old (target) child participated in a study of the relation between atypical developmental patterns in


children and parents' teaching behaviors with that child. In half of these families, the target child was diagnosed by a public-school child-study team, a speech and hearing clinic in a hospital setting, or a private therapist, as evidencing a moderate to severe communication handicap in the absence of other disabilities. All the children in this sample were enrolled in a public-school program and were receiving speech therapy and other support services through the school system. None of the children were considered mentally retarded, and one evidenced behavior problems that were considered to be secondary to the communication handicap. Several of the children also evidenced some perceptual-processing problems such as letter reversals. Each of the children was administered an audiogram to ensure that sounds in the normal speech range could be heard. There were several cases in which the history of the child indicated fluid in the ears, tube insertions, or hearing problems, but each of these problems had been corrected prior to participation in the present study.

The remaining 60 families were comprised of target children with no known disabilities or handicaps. These families were recruited through newspaper ads and notices sent home through the public schools. The families in this nonhandicapped (NH) group were selected on the basis of their similarity to one of the families with a communication-handicapped (CH) child in terms of demographic characteristics. The two samples were matched as closely as possible for the parents' education level, the target children's age, gender, and ordinal position in the family, the gender of the sibling closest in age to the target child, and the number and birth spacing of the children in the family. Of these 120 families, 86 consisted of a target child and a sibling who was over 3 years old. These 86 families provided the data base for the present study. The mean age was 73.41 months (SD = 7.06) for the CH target children and 77.16 months (SD = 6.61) for the NH sample. The mean age of the sibling closest in age to the target child was 95 months (SD = 15.65) for the CH sample and 98.26 months (SD = 16.35) for the NH sample. The mean number of years of formal schooling was 13.76 (SD = 2.05) for mothers of CH children and 15.33 (SD = 2.25) for mothers of NH children. Fathers' educational level was 15.18 years (SD = 2.36) within the CH sample and 16.54 years (SD = 2.10) within the NH sample. Demographic data regarding income, occupation, child gender, birth order, amount of time in speech therapy, and so forth, was available for all participant families, but only those variables which showed a significant association with parental teaching behaviors were maintained for subsequent analyses in this study. Those variables were parental education, parental age, and birth-interval spacing. Each family was paid $25 as compensation for their participation.

Procedure Two sets of measures were used with each family. Standardized tests of cognitive ability were individually administered to the target children and to the sibling who was closest in age to the target child. In addition, the mother and father were each observed interacting individually with the target child during a story task.


Ability Tests. Three tests of intellectual ability were administered individually to the target children and their siblings. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) developed by Dunn (1954) was administered to obtain information regarding the children's receptive vocabulary. This test requires the child to select a picture that depicts the vocabulary word in question from a number of options. A standardized score based on age norms is obtained. Children's performance on the PPVT has been found to be associated with teachers' use of distancing strategies (Cocking, 1979).

The Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices Test (Raven, 1956) was used to obtain a nonverbal measure of the child's competency. Standard administration procedures were followed with one exception, which was included to reduce the impact of verbal instruction procedures on performance. Two unscored practice items were constructed that were similar to placing a missing piece in a puzzle. These were used to train the child to select the piece that finished the puzzle and fit into the blank space. The Raven's test consists of three sets of 12 items that require the child to select an answer that fits an existing visual pattern. A level score based on age norms is assigned. The Raven's test was selected because it has proven to be valuable and reliable measure of intellectual ability for children with language or communication problems (Esquivel, 1987).

The Crichton test, which is the productive-vocabulary companion test to the Raven's test, was also administered to each child. The child is asked a series of probes concerning the meaning of two lists of 40 items. A level score based on age norms is assigned. The Crichton test was originally constructed to provide a verbal measure of ability that would complement information obtained from the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices Test (Raven, 1977). In addition, it differs from the PPVT and the Raven's test in that verbal responses are required.

The tests of ability were administered in the children's homes and the order of administration was counterbalanced across target children and siblings. All children performed the tests in the same order: the PPVT, the Raven's test, and the Crichton test. This order of administration was chosen for two reasons. First, the Raven's test was interposed between the two vocabulary tests to separate the verbal tests and minimize potential confusion with the receptive and productive vocabulary tests. Second, the PPVT was administered first because most of the CH children could perform with less difficulty on this receptive-ability test than on the productive-ability test. In nearly all the families with more than two children, the other sibling(s) of the target child was an infant and was not assessed because the instruments used to assess ability were not appropriate for the age group.

Parent-Child Interaction Observations. The parent-child interaction observations were conducted at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. The order of administration was counterbalanced across fathers and mothers, as well as target children and siblings. Each parent performed a story task with the target


child. The story tasks were selected because parents in previous studies have indicated they engage in these activities with their children often at home, and because parent teaching behaviors during story tasks have been associated with children's representational ability (Brody et al., 1986; Sigel, 1982). Two different stories were used to avoid repetition for the child across the interactions with the mother and father. Assignment of these stories was systematically varied so that half the mothers used one book and half used the alternative, and vice versa for the fathers. The two books, A Big Ball of String by Marion Holland and Christina Katerina and the Box by Patricia Lee Gauch were edited to equivalent lengths and to eliminate sex bias.

The parent was seated at a low table facing a one-way mirror with the book placed on the table in front of the seat. The parents were told to go through the story as they would at home. The child was then brought into the room and the door was closed as the researcher exited. Each interaction was videotaped through the one-way mirror. Videotaping began when the child entered the room and continued until the book was completed or until 5 min elapsed, whichever occurred later.

The mean length of interaction was 11.55 min (SD = 4.79). The first 2 min, the final 2 min and 1 min at the midpoint of the interaction were coded for frequencies of types of parents' teaching behaviors. These time intervals were determined using a time display generator that indicated elapsed time in seconds throughout the interaction.

The frequency of parent behaviors was coded using Flaugher and Sigel's (1980) revised Parent-Child Interaction Observation Schedule. The schedule defines a class of teaching behaviors which have been theoretically and em- pirically linked to the development of representational competence in children. Several studies with normally developing children and with preschool children evidencing a communication handicap have indicated that these teaching behaviors, known as distancing strategies, are related to children's performance on problem-solving tasks and intelligence tests (Pellegrini, McGillicuddy-De Lisi, Sigel, & Brody, 1986; Sigel, 1982). Distancing behaviors have been opera- tionalized as parental inquiry strategies that encourage the child to mentally reconstruct events, anticipate possible outcomes, and attend to transformations (Flaugher & Sigel, 1980). Theoretically, distancing strategies require the child to mentally represent information and formulate responses to inquiries. Such behaviors focus on the communicative environment of the child. In an experimental nursery-school setting, children's intellectual competence, especially in the area of language and vocabulary, was associated with teacher's use of distancing teaching strategies (Cocking, 1979).

Parents of normally developing (Sigel, 1982) and of CH (Pellegrini et al., 1986) children have been found to vary considerably in their use of distancing teaching behaviors, although this variability has not been investigated in relation to family demographic and ability levels of the child and siblings. Given the


inquiry nature of distancing strategies, it is likely that the presence of a communication handicap would affect parents' use of such teaching behaviors.

Each parental utterance that occurred during the 5 min of observation was scored according to three categories of behavior: (a) form of utterance (e.g., question, statement, imperative), (b) content of the utterance in terms of encour- agement to engage in particular representational processes (e.g., low level = label, describe, observe, etc.; mid level = reproduce, infer similarities, classify, etc.; high level = evaluate, propose alternatives, plan, etc.), and (c) communication cohesion behaviors (e.g., attention getting, verbal modeling, redirecting attention). Three of the behaviors central to distancing theory have been related to the development of representational competence, IQ, and language development in children (Cocking, 1979; Sigel, 1982) and were used to represent the parents' use of distancing strategies in this study. These behaviors are frequency scores for number of questions and frequency of low-level demands, as well as a summative score for use of cohesion behaviors. These three behaviors were therefore the focus of the present study. The parent-child interactions were scored by four coders. The mean interrater agreement between pairs of coders who independently scored 96 videotapes was 91.55% (range = 82% for verbal modeling to 99% for questions).

RESULTS

A matrix of correlations between the target children's ability scores, the siblings' ability scores, the mothers' and fathers' teaching behaviors, and demographic characteristics is presented in Table 1. The numbers above the diagonal refer to relationships obtained with the CH sample, whereas those below the diagonal refer to the NH sample. The correlations provide some support for the hypothesized associations between child abilities and parental teaching behaviors as well as replicate prior findings with normally developing preschool and school-age children. The correlations between demographic characteristics (child birth spacing, parent's age, and education) and children's ability scores are presented in the lower portion of the table for the NH sample and in the upper right portion of the table for the CH sample. For the NH sample, significant moderate associations were obtained between fathers' education and target children's and siblings' ability scores. For the CH sample, demographic characteristics of the family were related to the ability scores of the normally developing siblings, but the association between target children's ability scores and descriptive characteristics was not significant.

The association between target children's and siblings' ability scores followed different patterns in the CH and NH samples. As expected, the correlations between ability scores of the normally developing target children and their siblings were significant. For the CH sample, the PPVT and Raven's scores of target

TAB

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children and siblings were not significantly correlated. Only the Crichton scores of CH children and their siblings were significantly related to one another.

Significant associations were obtained between children's ability scores and parental teaching behaviors. However, the pattern of significant associations varied for fathers and mothers, as well as for communicative status of the target child. In the NH sample (see box in left central portion of the matrix), the target children's Raven's scores and the siblings' scores on all three measures were related to distancing behaviors of mothers. For the CH sample (see box in upper central portion of the matrix), mothers' distancing behaviors were consistently related to the target children's ability scores, but mothers' behaviors were not related to the siblings' ability levels. That is, when both children in the family were developing normally, maternal teaching behaviors were related to the ability levels of both children, but when one child in the family evidenced a communication handicap, mothers' behaviors were significantly related to the ability level of the child evidencing atypical development, and were not associated with abilities of the normally developing sibling in the family.

The pattern of associations between parental distancing behaviors and children's ability scores that was observed for fathers differed from that observed for mothers. In the NH sample, there were no significant correlations between fathers' teaching behaviors and ability scores of either the target children or their siblings. For the CH sample, however, the pattern of relationships obtained for fathers was similar to that for mothers. Fathers' distancing behaviors were consistently related to the CH target children's, but not to the siblings', behavior.

The relation between distancing behaviors of mothers and fathers also varied with communicative status of the target child. For the NH sample, there were no significant correlations between behaviors of mothers and fathers, although each was observed interacting with the same child in similar contexts. For the CH sample, each of the three distancing behaviors were significantly correlated for mothers and fathers (central portion of Table 1).

A path analysis was conducted to test a model based on family-systems theory which posits that both the target child's and the siblings' ability levels affect parental teaching behaviors. Path analysis provides several advantages over alternative methods of analysis. For example, when demographic characteristics are presumed to be related to both the child's ability and the parents' behaviors, the indirect and direct affects of the factors on parent behaviors can be estimated. That is, the association between parent education and children's ability indicates that parents with higher education levels have smarter children, probably for a variety of reasons. During interactions with that child, the more educated parent may respond to the higher level of intellectual functioning of that child. Thus, the association between parent education and parental teaching reflects direct effects, that is, more educated parents have developed more sophisticated teaching behaviors as a result of their education, and also reflects indirect effects, that is, the parents respond to the higher level of functioning of their children. Path analysis


enables estimation of both direct and indirect effects of such demographic characteristics in relation to parental teaching behaviors.

In addition, multiple measures of each construct, for example, PPVT, Ra- ven's, and Crichton scores as indicators of competency, can be used within the LISREL model, creating an ability construct and reducing the impact of measurement error. Similarly, the three variables selected from the observation system can be used to define both mothers' and fathers' teaching strategies with estimates of error in measurement built into the model. Finally, the results of path analyses applied to the two different samples can be examined, providing information concerning the association between target children's and siblings' ability whether the target child evidences a communication handicap or not.

Although path analysis is well suited to investigate developmental change through application to panel data, the classic use of structural-equation models is to set specific predictions concerning linkages among constructs based upon a substantive theory, obtain field data, and test the degree to which observed data fit the model (Blalock, 1971; Kenney, 1979). In the present study, family-systems theory posits that abilities of each child in the family affect the teaching behavior of the parent with any one child in the family, although the siblings' impact on parents' teaching behaviors was expected to be diminished if there is a CH child in the family. As is always the case, alternative models could well fit the data and the result of the path analyses will indicate which aspects of the model of associations between parent and child hold up across the two samples. The sample size is admittedly small, but the analyses are essentially replications of the same model with two samples that are remarkably similar, with the exception of the communicative status of the target child.

The variance-covariance matrices for the CH and NH samples were analyzed separately using LISREL. The results are presented in Figure 1 (p. 226) for the CH sample and Figure 2 (p. 227) for the NH sample. The straight arrows represent hypothesized direction of effects based upon temporal priority or family-systems theory, and the double-headed arrows indicate associations without hypothesized direction of effects. The numbers over the arrows are standardized weights with significance based upon raw score weights. As the R 2 in the lower portion of the Figure 1 indicates, antecedent variables included in the model [mothers' education (x~), fathers' education (x2), and birth spacing (x3)] were not significantly related to the target children's (xl~) ability (.03), but were related to the siblings' ('q2) ability scores (.37). Mothers' ('q3) and fathers' ('q4) teaching behaviors were related to antecedent variables when the child is communication handicapped (R2s = .55 and .58, for mothers' and fathers' instructional strategies, respectively). Inspection of Figure 1 indicates that the target children's competency is a strong predictor of both mothers' and fathers' behaviors (standardized path coefficients = - . 7 8 and - . 7 3 , respectively), whereas the siblings' competency is much weaker and nonsignificant in relation to parental teaching behaviors (.25 and .05, for mothers and fathers, respectively). Mothers' and

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fathers' behaviors were related to one another (r = .58) as were competency levels of the two children in the family (r = .38) when all exogenous variables in the model are taken into account. On the whole, these results support those observed in the pattern of correlations, although the structural-equation approach considers associations among all the variables in the model simultaneously.

The data obtained from the NH sample were generally consistent with predictions, and were similar to those obtained with the CH sample to a large degree. This is indicated by the R2s in the lower portion of Figure 2. The target children's and the siblings' ability levels were each related to exogenous variables, especially fathers' education (R2s = .29 and .40, respectively). Note that birth spacing was related to the siblings' abilities as well. Mothers' teaching behaviors were predicted by the antecedent variables (R 2 = .33), which was largely due to the association with siblings' ability levels (path coefficient = - .62 ; see Figure 2). The target children's own ability levels were not strongly associated with the mothers' behaviors (path coefficient = - .06) during interactions with the child. The relation between birth spacing and mothers' teaching behaviors remained surprisingly high (path coefficient = - .35) after associations with children's ability levels were taken into account. Contrary to expectations, but consistent with the correlation coefficients, fathers' teaching behaviors were not significantly related to antecedent variables (R 2 = .20), although the association with the target children's competency level (path coefficient = - .33) was high. The difference between patterns of relations observed for mothers and fathers in the NH sample suggests that there may be differences between mothers and fathers in the sources of parental teaching behaviors.

The ability levels of the two children in the family were related to one another in the NH sample as they were in the CH sample (r = .52), which takes into account the relation of ability to educational level of the parents and birth spacing between the children. The mothers' and fathers' teaching behaviors were not significantly related, however (r = .04).

DISCUSSION

The interrelationships among descriptive variables, child ability levels, and parent distancing behaviors observed in the NH sample are consistent with those reported in prior studies. For example, fathers' education levels were related to target children's and siblings' ability scores in the present study. These correlations are consistent with prior findings regarding associations between social- class indices, such as fathers' education level, and children's intellectual ability (e.g., Bee, Van Egeren, Streissguth, Nyman, & Leckie, 1969). The path analysis conducted on the NH sample included in the present study also indicated an association between parent education and children's ability scores, as well as between education level and maternal teaching behavior. Similar associations between parental education and children's intellectual performance have been


reported in path analytic studies of parents and children (Laosa, 1980; McGillicuddy-De Lisi, 1982).

The distancing behaviors of mothers in the present study showed low but significant associations with several, but not all, of the child and sibling ability scores. The association of fathers' distancing behaviors and children's ability scores approached, but did not reach, the level of significance in both the Pear- son correlation analysis and the path analysis. Sigel's (1982) regression analysis of the relation between parents' distancing behaviors and children's performance on a variety of tasks revealed a similar pattern of differences between mothers and fathers. Differences between mothers and fathers in the relation between parental behaviors and children's intellectual performance have also been observed in studies that compared maternal and paternal teaching styles (McGillicuddy-De Lisi, 1982, 1988).

In addition, the correlations between scores of the target children and their siblings in the NH families were low to moderate. The magnitude of the correlations (see Table 1) is within the range found in most studies of biologically related siblings (Erlenmyer-Kimling & Jarvik, 1963). Finally, the relation between maternal and paternal teaching strategies was not significant in spite of the fact that each parent interacted with the same child on the same type of task. This lack of association replicates findings with a larger sample of normally developing children (McGillicuddy-De Lisi, 1982). These consistencies in findings across studies, despite differences in measures of child ability and types of analyses, suggests that data from the present study are reliable.

The focus of the present study differed from that of prior studies in three major ways, however. First, the primary interest of the present study was parental teaching strategies rather than an attempt to identify teaching behaviors that might affect children's development. Second, a sample of families with a CH child provided the opportunity to investigate how family functioning in general, and parental teaching behaviors in particular, vary with the child's communicative status. Third, the present study included an examination of the role of a sibling in relation to behavioral measures of mothers and fathers with a different, target child in the family. Each of these domains was included as an aspect to be examined within the context of a family-systems approach.

With respect to parental teaching behaviors, correlations indicated that children's ability levels, as well as demographic characteristics, were related to parents' use of distancing strategies. This finding is consistent with both the- oretical and empirical literatures that suggest that children affect parents in the course of social interactions with one another (Bell, 1977). The pattern of these associations varied, as expected, with the status of the child and with parent gender.

The correlation coefficients indicated that for CH children, teaching behaviors of both mothers and fathers were related to children's ability levels. The results of the path analyses, which simultaneously take into account the associations


with antecedent exogenous variables, as well as allow estimation of error terms in the child ability and parent behaviors scores, also revealed a strong relation between target children's ability and both mothers' and fathers' behaviors. Such associations are consistent with conclusions that parents of atypically developing children are responsive to the abilities of their children and match the level of their teaching to the child's level of functioning (Pellegrini et al., 1986). Al- though a conclusion regarding direction of effects is not possible, there is reason to believe that in such families, the most salient influence on parental behavior is, therefore, the behavior of the child, and most other factors diminish in impor- tance. For example, the association of all other factors that have been reliably related to parental behaviors in prior studies (such as education and birth spacing) is weak in the CH sample of families. Comparison of the pattern of findings with that obtained for the NH families also supports this explanation of family process.

In the NH sample, significant correlations were found only between the target children's Raven's scores and mothers' distancing behaviors. Associations with fathers' behaviors approached significance for both the PPVT and Crichton scores. In the path analysis, the target children's ability scores were not predic- tive of maternal behaviors and, though ability variables were the strongest predictor of fathers' behaviors, this association failed to reach the level of significance. In the NH sample, then, the target child's ability level is very weak in relation to parental teaching behaviors, in contrast to the strong and consistent associations observed in the CH sample.

The weak association between target children's competency in the NH group, especially in contrast to the strong associations observed in the CH sample, might lead to the suggestion that there was greater variability in the CH group ability scores and perhaps range restriction effects in the relation observed for the NH group. Comparison of variability in ability scores revealed that raw scores were more variable in the CH group than in the NH, but there was considerable variation in ability scores in the NH group as well. Inspection of the correlational results using sibling ability also suggest that there was sufficient variability in the normally developing groups of children to allow for correlations with parent behavior variables, thus reducing the liklihood that the observed pattern is due to differences in the distribution of scores in the two samples.

Recall that the sibling ability scores were obtained to investigate the degree to which another family member could influence the nature of the interaction between the target child and the parent. In the NH families, the correlations between the siblings' ability scores and the mothers' behaviors with the other target child were significant and relatively consistent across measures (see Table 1). In the path analysis, sibling ability was the single best predictor of maternal teaching behavior. This finding replicates and extends CicireUi's (1976) finding regarding the impact of older siblings on maternal teaching behavior. That study revealed that mothers' behaviors during interactions with their children differed if


the child had an older sister, although that sister was not present during the interaction. In the present study, the intellectual ability of the sibling was identi- fied as the important feature of the sibling that produced the finding that mothers' teaching behaviors with one child in the family were related to the older sibling.

The most likely explanation for this pattern in which maternal behavior was strongly related to the sibling of the child whom she was teaching, rather than to the child's own ability level, is one derived from systems theory. This suggests that experience as a parent of the sibling who has already passed through the developmental level evidenced by the target child is more important in relation to teaching the normally developing child than the child's own current level of ability. The mothers' teaching behaviors have been influenced by what has been successful with that highly competent sibling, and low-level demands and cohesion behaviors to keep the child on task are unnecessary. The converse is true for the less competent siblings. Their mothers have incorporated low-level demands and communication cohesion behaviors into their teaching strategies because these strategies have led to better results with the sibling. Although the competency measures were scored based on age norms and age of the sibling was therefore unlikely to be responsible for this effect, 71% of the siblings in this sample were older than the target children. As a result, the mothers have had greater opportunities to develop their teaching style based on knowledge and interactions with this older sibling. With CH children, this experience with a sibling is not as relevant vis-a-vis teaching interactions with that child, and the parents' behavior is likely to be influenced more by what the CH child can do than by the parents' personal history, such as educational experiences and experiences as a parent of the sibling.

The father's behavior, in contrast, was not related to the sibling's competency level in either sample. The differences in patterns of relationships obtained for mothers and fathers support the notion that the teaching role may develop and function in quite different ways for fathers and mothers in families of normally developing children (McGillicuddy-De Lisi, 1990). The lack of relation between fathers' and mothers' behaviors provides further evidence that these teaching roles are not the result of the same processes or content for mothers and fathers.

Within the context of systems theory, these results pertaining to the CH sample support the notion of the focal role of the atypically developing child in the family system. As the special child in the family, his or her competency level becomes an object of attention and concern, with the result that interaction patterns are regulated to a greater degree by that individual than by others, such as the sibling, in the family.

There are other possible explanations that would also be consistent with the observed associations, however. For example, the reduced communicative competency may restrict the possible instructional strategies of the parents to such a degree that their teaching behaviors reflect a response to the handicapping condi- tion and, hence, a relationship to assessed ability scores. In this case, the rela-


tionship between children's competency and parents' teaching behaviors would not be due to the greater impact of the atypical child on the family per se, but to a greater impact of the disability on the behaviors that are elicited from any other individual, including the parents, who might engage in a teaching interaction with that child. This would also account for the stronger and significant relation between mothers' and fathers' behaviors when they interact with a CH child. That is, this association may reflect the fact that both parents are respondents to similar behaviors evidenced by the child, rather than a result of similar styles of teaching that have evolved over life experiences with one another and with the child.

Although there is not sufficient evidence to determine if the atypical child creates a greater regulatory role for himself or herself within the family, or if the results are due to a reaction to the competencies of the child in the interaction itself, isolated from the larger context of the family or relationships, it is logical to assume that atypically developing children affect those around them both in the context of a single interaction and in the context of an ongoing dynamic system that is defined by and affects the development of its members (Mink, 1987).

Future research concerning the relative contribution of siblings to parental behaviors within families that vary in ability levels of the children can address the issue of whether such relations represent an accommodation that occurs during the course of the observed interaction or is reflective of an adaptation within the family system. A comparison of teaching behaviors of adults who have a history with the children within the family and nonfamily member adults who may act as teachers to the child would provide important information about these relationships. In addition, an assessment of the sibling subsystem and the mother- father subsystem may provide information concerning the observed differences in significant relationships between mothers' and fathers' behaviors, as well as increase our understanding of how the interdependencies within a family system function when one child evidences atypical development or special needs in some area. Finally, a longitudinal study of parents as they and their children develop is necessary for a fuller understanding of determinants of development of both parents and children within the changing context of the family.

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Correlates of parental teaching strategies in families of children evidencing normal and atypical development