Child and Family Center
Barcelona Conference Room
2:30-3:30 pm

January 14, 2004

Katy Cahill
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon
"Maternal positivity and negativity as mediators of shared environmental variance: Evidence from adoptive siblings"

Abstract: Traditional socialization research suggests that mothers’ positive and negative feelings toward their children may shape their children’s temperamental and behavioral outcomes. However, the genetic similarity between mother and child participants in most research may be what accounts for the ability to predict child outcomes from maternal behavior and affect. Designs which eliminate or control this possible passive gene-environment correlation are needed to determine whether the association between mothers’ behavior and affect and children’s outcomes is truly environmentally mediated. This study measures shared environmental variance in child temperament and emotional and behavioral adjustment and investigates the extent to which observed and self-reported maternal positivity and negativity accounts for genetically unrelated adoptive sibling similarity in temperament and adjustment.