Attentional Processes in Insular and Noninsular Mothers:

Abstract

Fifteen mother-child dyads were given psychological help for coercive problems in their day-to-day interactions. Seven of these mothers were self-referred, middle income parents whose daily community contacts classed them as noninsular. The remaining eight mothers, classed as insular, were referred by other agencies and were low income parents with quite different patterns of community contact. These patterns reflected infrequent and aversive interchanges, primarily with kinfolk and helping agency representatives. The helping procedures encompassed parent training along the lines specified by social learning theory. In addition, all mothers attended weekly therapy sessions in which they were encouraged to describe their problem interchanges with their children. Parent training effectiveness was assessed through direct observations of mother-child interactions in the home settings. Mother descriptions during the therapy sessions were videotaped and assessed by observers. Results showed that the noninsular mothers improved their child interactions during parent training and maintained this improvement during a 4-month follow-up. The insular mothers showed equal improvement during parent training, but they did not maintain these gains in follow-up. Of central interest were differences in insular and noninsular mother descriptions of child problems between baseline and parent training. During parent training, the noninsular mothers offered more detailed descriptions with little blame attribution, compared to their baseline descriptions. In contract, the insular mothers showed no change in their global, blame oriented descriptions. It was inferred that parent training did not alter the attending behaviors of the insular mothers.