Browsing by Author "Coppola, Gabrielle"
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- Changes in preschool children’s social engagement positively predict changes in social competence: A three‐year longitudinal study of portuguese childrenPublication . Santos, António J.; Daniel, J. R.; Antunes, Marta; Coppola, Gabrielle; Trudel, Marcel; Vaughn, BrianTo test the hypothesis that social engagement is a foundational aspect of other peer social competence indicators during early childhood, 160 Portuguese preschool children (“3‐year‐olds”) were observed at least in two different school years, using a battery of validated social competence assessments based on direct observations and child interviews. Multilevel growth models tested whether social engagement predicted initial values and linear changes in the other social competence indicators. Results were consistent with the hypothesis, insofar as both initial values and changes in social engagement significantly predicted initial values and changes in other social competence indicators. Additionally, the number of children's reciprocated friendships was also predicted by social engagement. These results are discussed from the perspectives of conceptual frameworks that consider individual differences in social competence during early childhood as a consequence of attachment histories and/or emotional competence.
- Hierarchical models of social competence in preschool children: A multisite, multinational studyPublication . Vaughn, Brian E.; Shin, Nana; Kim, Mina; Coppola, Gabrielle; Krzysik, Lisa; Santos, António José; Peceguina, Maria Inês Duarte; Daniel, João Rodrigo; Veríssimo, Manuela; DeVries, Anthon; Elphick, Eric; Ballentina, Xiomara; Bost, Kelly K.; Newell, Wanda Y.; Miller, Ellaine B.; Snider, J. Blake; Korth, BryanThe generality of a multilevel factorial model of social competence (SC) for preschool children was tested in a 5-group, multinational sample (N = 1,540) using confirmatory factor analysis. The model fits the observed data well, and tests constraining paths for measured variables to their respective first-order factors across samples also fit well. Equivalence of measurement models was found at sample and sex within-sample levels but not for age within sample. In 2 groups, teachers’ ratings were examined as correlates of SC indicators. Composites of SC indicators were significantly associated with both positive and negative child attributes from the teachers’ ratings. The findings contribute to understanding of both methodological and substantive issues concerning SC in young children.
- Is the secure base phenomenon evident here, there, and anywhere? A cross-cultural study of child behavior and experts' definitionsPublication . Posada, German; Lu, Ting; Trumbell, Jill; Kaloustian, Garene; Trudel, Marcel; Plata, Sandra J.; Peña, Paola P.; Perez, Jennifer; Tereno, Susana; Dugravier, Romain; Coppola, Gabrielle; Constantini, Alessandro; Cassibba, Rosalinda; Kondo-Ikemura, Kiyomi; Nóblega, Magaly; Haya, Ines M.; Pedraglio, Claudia; Veríssimo, Manuela; Santos, António José; Monteiro, Lígia Maria Santos; Lay, Keng-LingThe evolutionary rationale offered by Bowlby implies that secure base relationships are common in child–caregiver dyads and thus, child secure behavior observable across diverse social contexts and cultures. This study offers a test of the universality hypothesis. Trained observers in nine countries used the Attachment Q-set to describe the organization of children’s behavior in naturalistic settings. Children (N = 547) were 10–72 months old. Child development experts (N = 81) from all countries provided definitions of optimal child secure base use. Findings indicate that children from all countries use their mother as a secure base. Children’s organization of secure base behavior was modestly related to each other both within and across countries. Experts’ descriptions of the optimally attached child were highly similar across cultures.
- Longitudinal analyses of a hierarchical model of peer social competence for preschool children: Structural fidelity and external correlatesPublication . Shin, Nana; Vaughn, Brian E.; Kim, Mina; Krzysik, Lisa; Bost, Kelly K.; McBride, Brent; Santos, António José; Peceguina, Maria Inês Duarte; Coppola, GabrielleAchieving consensus on the definition and measurement of social competence (SC) for preschool children has proven difficult in the developmental sciences. We tested a hierarchical model in which SC is assumed to be a second-order latent variable by using longitudinal data (N = 345). We also tested the degree to which peer SC at Time 1 predicted changes in positive adjustment from Time 1 to Time 2, based on teacher and peer ratings. Using a multiple-method datacollection strategy, information for three subdomains of SC (social engagement/ motivation, profiles of social interaction and personality assets assessed with Q-sorts, peer acceptance) were collected across consecutive years in preschool programs. Longitudinal confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) demonstrated invariance of both the measurement and the structural models across age levels and yielded a cross-time path weight of .74 for the second-order factor. Analyses of latent means suggested significant increases in SC scores from the first year to second year of participation, and longitudinal cases in their second year of participation had higher scores than did age peers who entered the program as older children. Finally, Time 1 SC predicted increases from Time 1 to Time 2 for SC-relevant indicators rated by teachers and peers (standardized path coefficient of .29, p < .001).
- Preschool children’s mental representations of attachment: Antecedents in their secure base behaviors and maternal attachment scriptsPublication . Wong, Maria; Bost, Kelly K.; Shin, Nana; Veríssimo, Manuela; Maia, Joana Branco; Monteiro, Lígia Maria Santos; Silva, Filipa; Coppola, Gabrielle; Costantini, Alessandro; Vaughn, Brian E.This study examined the antecedents of preschool age children’s mental representations of attachment, assessed using the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT). Antecedent predictors were maternal attachment scripts, assessed using the Attachment Script Assessment (ASA), and the child’s secure base behaviors, assessed using the Attachment Q-Set (AQS). Participants were 121 mothers and their preschool children assessed in three samples (Portuguese sample, n ¼ 31; US Midwestern sample, n ¼ 38; US Southeastern sample, n ¼ 52). AQS and ASA assessments were completed approximately 1.5 years before the ASCT data were collected. No cross-sample contrasts for the attachment variables were significant. Correlations and structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that the three attachment measures were significantly associated and that both maternal secure base script knowledge and children’s secure base behaviors (AQS) were uniquely and significantly associated with children’s mental representations of attachment (ASCT). A test of the indirect effect between maternal scripts and child representations through children’s secure base behaviors was not significant.
- The latent structure of secure base script knowledgePublication . Waters, Theodore E. A.; Fraley, R. Chris; Groh, Ashley M.; Steele, Ryan D.; Vaughn, Brian E.; Bost, Kelly K.; Veríssimo, Manuela; Coppola, Gabrielle; Roisman, Glenn I.There is increasing evidence that attachment representations abstracted from childhood experiences with primary caregivers are organized as a cognitive script describing secure base use and support (i.e., the secure base script). To date, however, the latent structure of secure base script knowledge has gone unexamined— this despite that such basic information about the factor structure and distributional properties of these individual differences has important conceptual implications for our understanding of how representations of early experience are organized and generalized, as well as methodological significance in relation to maximizing statistical power and precision. In this study, we report factor and taxometric analyses that examined the latent structure of secure base script knowledge in 2 large samples. Results suggested that variation in secure base script knowledge—as measured by both the adolescent (N 674) and adult (N 714) versions of the Attachment Script Assessment—is generalized across relationships and continuously distributed.
- The quality of maternal secure-base scripts predicts children's secure-base behavior at home in three sociocultural groupsPublication . Vaughn, Brian E.; Coppola, Gabrielle; Veríssimo, Manuela; Monteiro, Lígia Maria Santos; Santos, António José; Posada, German; Carbonell, Olga A.; Plata, Sandra J.; Waters, Harriet S.; Bost, Kelly K.; McBride, Brent; Shin, Nana; Korth, BryanThe secure-base phenomenon is central to the Bowlby/Ainsworth theory of attachment and is also central to the assessment of attachment across the lifespan. The present study tested whether mothers’ knowledge about the secure-base phenomenon, as assessed using a recently designed wordlist prompt measure for eliciting attachment-relevant stories, would predict their children’s securebase behavior, as assessed by observers in the home and summarized with the Attachment Q-set (AQS). In each of three sociocultural groups (from Colombia, Portugal, and the US), scores characterizing the quality of maternal secure-base narratives elicited using the word-list prompt procedure were internally consistent, as indicated by tests of cross-story reliability, and they were positively and significantly associated with the child’s security score from the AQS for each subsample. The correlation in the combined sample was r(129) = .33, p < .001. Subsequent analyses with the combined sample evaluated the AQS item-correlates of the secure-base script score. These analyses showed that mothers whose stories indicate that they have access to and use a positive secure-base script in their story production have children who treat them as a “secure base” at home. These results suggest that a core feature of adult attachment models, in each of the three sociocultural groups studied, is access to a secure-base script. Additional results from the study indicate that cross-language translations of the maternal narratives can receive valid, reliable scores even when evaluated by non-native speakers.