This article reviews literature that explains the development and maintenance of aggressive mother-child interactions using operant learning theory, highlighting limitations in its explanatory power. We also review research on the association between perceptions and the maintenance of aggressive interactions. An integrative, multipathway model of mother-child aggression is presented in which the affective-cognitive biases of mothers and children and measures of their coerciveness help explain and predict subsequent coercive interactions. We conclude with implications for intervention.

Longitudinal follow-up data for 69 very low birthweight preterm infants were used to assess the influence of four factors (neonatal medical complications, infant temperament, mother-child relationships, and family environment) on mother and teacher reports of behavior problems at 4 years. The proposed model of such influences being tested assumed that (1) the effects of neonatal medical factors would be indirect, and (2) each of the other three factors would show high stability from 1 to 4 years and would have a direct influence on behavior problem outcomes. Neither neonatal medical data nor infant-mother attachment were good predictors of behavior problems at age 4. With these exceptions, teacher report of behavior problems was predicted in a fashion consistent with the preliminary model. However, mother reports of behavior problems was predicted only by prior mother reports of child temperament. Discussion focuses on reasons for discrepancies in these pathways of influence.

This study tested the hypothesis that preschool-aged children with significant externalizing behavior problems are more likely to have insecure attachment relationships than nonproblem peers, as measured by separation/ reunion behavior at the time of clinic referral. Fifty children (ages 3–6) and their mothers participated: 25 referred to a child psychiatry clinic for one of the DSM-III-R Disruptive Behavior Disorders, and 25 matched comparison children without behavior problems. Using two new attachment coding systems for children of this age, we found that 84% of the children in the clinic group were classified as insecure, whereas only 28% of the comparison group were so classified (p <.001). Clinic children were also found more frequently to protest their mother's departure and to search for her more often during the separation. The implications of these results for the validity of separation/reunion behavior as an index of attachment at this age are discussed, as well as the methodological and conceptual problems that complicate our study of the link between attachment and behavior disorder.

Individual differences in attachment organization among adults with serious psychopathological disorders were related to strategies of treatment use. Forty young adults with serious psychopathological disorders were administered the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984), and their clinicians completed ratings of treatment use. Attachment organization was assessed using the Attachment Q-set (Kobak, 1989), yielding ratings of security/anxiety and avoidance/preoccupation. In preliminary analyses, diagnosis was found to be related to security, with greater security associated with affective rather than thought disorders. Gender was related to avoidance/preoccupation, with males having stronger avoidant tendencies than females. The effects of diagnosis and gender were partialled out of subsequent analyses. As predicted, greater security was associated with more compliance with treatment, as rated by clinicians. Stronger avoidant tendencies were associated with greater rejection of treatment providers, less self-disclosure, and poorer use of treatment. These findings suggest that attachment organization may be an important determinant of how individuals with serious psychopathological disorders approach attachment figures.

Gaze behavior was assessed in 20 autistic individuels and in an age- and mental-age-matched mentally retarded control group. A time-sample technique was used to collect frequency of gaze directed at staff, at task, and elsewhere (at other) in familiar educational settings as subjects interacted with familiar staff and engaged in familiar educational activities. Gaze behaviors were sampled in each of three interactional conditions defined by staff-subject ratio. Significant effects of the intensity of the interactional condition were observed for both groups. Overall autistic subjects were more likely to look elsewhere than the matched control cases and looked less at staff during one-to-one interaction. Relationships to age, developmental level, and other measures are discussed.

Family interaction patterns were compared for children with depressive disorders and children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). Results indicated that compared to SSD children, depressed children were less positive and more negative when interacting with their mothers. Additionally, depressed children did not significantly reciprocate positive or negative statements initiated by their mothers, whereas reciprocity of both positiveness and negativeness was a significant characteristic of the SSD children. While no between group differences were found in the base rates of mothers' positive and negative responses, mothers of SSD children were more likely than mothers of depressed children to reciprocate child negativeness. Maternal reciprocity of positive statements, while not discriminating diagnostic groups, was a significant characteristic only of mothers of depressed children. The implications of these results for theories of developmental psychopathology are discussed.

This study examined adolescents' expectations and values about how competent behaviors would work for them in difficult social situations and explored the relation of these appraisals to adolescents' delinquency, drug use, and sexual intercourse without use of adequate birth control. Several lines of research on the determinants of adolescent achievement motivation, social competence, and various problem behaviors are integrated within a unified framework based on both motivational and cognitive-social learning theories. One hundred adolescents at-risk for problematic behaviors, aged 15½–18, received structured interviews measuring their expectations of self-efficacy in performing socially competent behaviors, their expectations about the outcomes of these behaviors, their values toward these behaviors, their perceptions of the values of peers, and their identification with the values of important adults. Adolescents also reported their recent levels of delinquency, hard drug use, and unprotected sexual activity. Adolescents' expectations and values were significantly related to all three problem behaviors; males' low efficacy expectations and females' lack of identification with an adult's values were the strongest correlates of problem behaviors. Adolescents' expectations and values are considered as potentially important aspects of adolescents' models of themselves in social interactions, which may mediate the link between problematic family relationships in childhood and deviant behavior in adolescence.