Parent Training & Child Behavior

• Parent training is a necessary part of effective treatment for common childhood issues.
• There is limited understanding of the factors influencing parent behavior, despite the use of effective parent-training methods.
• Child behavior is a controlling element for parent conduct, which influences the development of childhood issues and the results of parent training.

Key Points

• The examination of the data reinforces the idea that child behavior affects parents through acting as both antecedents and consequences.
• Implications for parent training are discussed, including suggestions for further studies.

Parental Nonadherence

• This remains a significant obstacle to achieving robust behavior change.
• Parent training doesn't always produce successful results, and reasons of failure aren't always understood.
• Variables such as family demographics, the severity of the child's problem behavior, and life stress can predict how well treatment works, but can't be easily changed.
• Low socioeconomic status and single-mother status were predictive of poorer parent-training outcomes.
• These variables may be descriptive/predictive, but don't explain parent training failures or lead to effective behavioral technology.
• It's important to remember that parent behavior responds to reinforcing effects, even though behavior experts frequently emphasize it as a source of reinforcement for child problem behavior.
• To account for parental noncompliance, behavior analysts should assess the circumstances influencing a parent's conduct.
• Traditional developmental and behavior-analytic perspectives on behavior are congruent.

Child Effects

• Child's behavior can affect the actions of the parent.
• Parent's actions are a result of previous experience and current conditions of the child behavior
• Behavior analysts add that current parent repertoires are a product of learning history and present environmental variables provided by child behavior

Parent Behavior Followed

• The occurrence (a positive operation)
• The cessation (a negative operation) of child behavior reinforces the preceding parent behavior
• Child behavior signals the availability of a reinforcer (discriminative stimulus)
• Child behavior increases the reinforcer's value (establishing operation); both increase the likelihood of parent behavior related to corresponding reinforcers.

Tantrums

• The analyst might advise the parent to ignore tantrums, child problem behavior might establish its own removal as reinforcing and evoke parent responses that have characteristically resulted in this outcome.
• Researchers have started researching both desired and undesirable parent-child interactions that either strengthen or weaken parent behavior, despite methodological difficulties (direct observation reactivity).
• The objectives of the review are to build on prior work by reviewing child behavior's effects on parent conduct, discussing parent training's ramifications, and making study recommendations.
• Included were child-effects studies focused on parent and teacher behavior from the traditional and behavior-analytic approaches to child development.
• Traditional studies describe parent-child interactions and offer correlational analyses, while behavior-analytic approach aims to discover behavior's relationship to those events.
• Understanding is achieved by interlacing data from both correlational and experimental studies.
• The existing literature is divided by the type of operation the child behavior provides: negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement.

Negative Reinforcement Contingencies for Parent Behavior

• Patterson provided analysis of negative reinforcement provided by child behavior for parent behavior that he called a negative reinforcement trap
• Patterson suggested that child behavior provides negative reinforcement for parent responses as early as infancy, affecting escalating problem behavior and intense parental punishment.
• Researchers recently provided additional evidence to support Patterson’s work with the escape and avoidance of problem behavior.

Escape and Avoidance of Problem Behavior

• Adults might avoid presenting learning opportunities or leisure items due to negative reinforcement contingencies provided by child behavior
• Carr, Taylor and Robinson (1991) and Stocco, Thompson, and Rodriguez (2011) described differences in participant presentation of demands and leisure items, respectively, that corresponded with levels of child problem behavior.
• Participants engaged in more teaching activity with the child who was more likely to comply with demands and engaged in less problem behavior.
• Participants presented fewer demands to the non-compliant child and avoided demands that preceded higher rates of problem behavior.
• Stocco et al (2011) reported when teachers presented leisure items to children with autism that pattern of adult–child interactions was similar, one child engaged with limited range of leisure items and commonly engaged in problem behavior when items outside that range.
• They removed or avoided the presentation of leisure items that corresponded with problem behavior.
• Parents might give attention/preferred items as a result of bad behavior as a way of escaping/avoiding the behavior's problem.
• Verbal reprimands are a common attention form that follows child problem behavior
• Reprimands can reinforce child problem behavior
• Problem behavior common before reprimands
• When experimentally manipulating problem behavior in a simulated teaching scenario, it would provide negative reinforcement contingency for reprimands
• Confederates terminated problem behavior contingent on reprimands.

Escape and Avoidance of Infant Crying

• Research shows that infant crying usually leads to caregiving from adults are likely reinforced by the cessation of crying
• A caregiving response only observed when researchers arrange cry escape or avoidance response following that care.
• Extinction caused resurgence of caregiving responses, which was influenced by reinforcement history length for individual responses, and the prior extinguished response then reemerged.
• Infant crying response is partly the development factor for parental responses to infant crying.
• Child problem behavior and reprimands is good example of how experimenters identified possible negative reinforcement contingency provided by child problem behavior for parent behavior and then experimentally demonstrated this relation in a follow-up study

Negative Reinforcement Future Research

• Researches should use both descriptive and experimental methods.
• Descriptive studies show plausibility by showing the natural aspect
• Also look to traditional developmental literature, Bell and Chapman (1986) reviewed literature and suggested dependent behavior of the child corresponds with teaching

Completion of Tasks and the Undesirable Interaction

• Parent might instruct child to put on shoes, and child might request, and parent might put child shoes on making child more likely to ask when task is independently presented
• Excessive help does not allow the child to attempt skills
• Parents should be reinforced the same way by performing desirable care, especially because young babies have no way to communicate.
• Parent behavior with infants might be reinforced similarly in other situations.
• Parents stop crying by shaking could be tied to child abuse since parents go through periods of inconsolable crying and rock child in attempts which produce temporary relief.
• It is important to emphasize, in addition to child abuse, that this leads to improvements in abuse treatment/preventative care.
• Further research on contingencies of reinforcement provided by child behavior might open some avenues to researching lore about parent–child interactions and the processes responsible
• Skinner says punishment is due to the reinforcement of the immediate cessation of behavior

Positive Reinforcement Contingencies for Parent Behavior

• Wahler described a positive reinforcement trap that might lead to less-than-ideal parent-child interactions.
• Types of child attention, like cuddling, reinforce parent allowing child home from school following dishonesty.
• Contingences have been looked in form of correct/social responses.

Correct Responses

• Evidence suggests correct responses = reinforced parental delivery
• Delivery of praise statements increases correct responses
• Tone of vice indicate reinforcement contingenties by child behavior
• Child responses, which means a potential reinforcement contingency

Experimental Manipulation of Child Behavior

• Parent behavior to child’s behavior is accumulating but requires demonstrations to show plausible alternative explanations
• To conduct analyses with child behavior = challenging
• Child confederates might not fully have control, so its hard to determine and be useful

Video Clips

• Researchers use them to present samples of child behavior
• Parents respond more negatively to overactive children compared to calmer ones
• Might be a useful research because researchers get view both action (action of parents) and evoke (effect of child behavior).
• That said, it's not always reliable research for parent verbal responses, it is how it is said in the videos.
• Should include relevant consequences and parents to be engaging by measuring child behavior

Child Proxy

• Child substitutes included to conduct research on child behaviors
• These studies (child substitutes) show behavior and sensitivity well but not as well on child behavior
• The results are consistent with infant interactions but might suffer the risk with using them as role because children prefer reinforcement for alternative behavior

How Parent Training Can Benefit

• Most childhood behavior problems require parental behavior implementation.
• Contingency analysis of parent behavior can remedy through parent training rather than neglected for parent behavior
• Training parent should also be able to contribute

Functional Parent Training

• A possible function training for behavior-change agents for Parent and
• Child = communication which means that effects of parent teaching parents that allows escape but does not
• Reinforce it in a way that allows for it, example teaching how a parent requests a break.

General Notes for Above

• If parents have low reinforcement from child, then the training is not beneficial. Preventative

Preventive Care

• Parent training helps fix behavior in home environment
• The link between family and teacher help aggressive and social skills and prevent escalation of parents and children

Other notes from above

• Need to design a situation of practice and test
• Practice is what helps lead to success for child and parent.
• Need research on what is the best way to improve and reduce problem behavior. Most of those are from parents but not all