Research with normals and schizophrenics has indicated the importance of maternal childrearing control and nurturance. The first experiment tested whether patterns of maternal control and nurturance would relate to the son's subsequent cognitive performance under conditions involving social censure. Ss were 63 college males. Ss rating their mothers as highly controlling-low nurturant (rejecting pattern) were poorer in conceptual performance than Ss whose mothers were rated as low controlling-highly nurturant (accepting pattern). The same results were obtained when 74 males were divided into paternal childrearing pattern groups and their conceptual performance compared. It was proposed that social censure elicits responses which interfere with effective cognitive performance in Ss whose rejecting childrearing histories have mediated low self-esteem.

Perceived maternal childrearing practices were related to concept formation performance obtained under conditions involving negative social reinforcement. College girls reporting low control-lour nurrurant ("ignoring" pattern) or high control-low nurturant ("rejecting" partern) childrearing histories were conceptually inferior to those whose mothers were perceived as low control-high nurturant ("accepting" pattern). Personality differences among childrearing groups were also reported for both males and females. It was proposed that poorer conceptaal performance was obtained because a perceived "ignoring" mother-daughter relationship mediates an insensitivity to social reinforcement, whereas "rejected" females develop a special (disruptive) sensitivity to aversive social rein€orcernznt.Two recent experimects (Heilbrun, Orr, & Harrell, in press; Heilbrun LQ Orr, in press) have demonstrated that the type of childrearing control pattern attributed to the mother by her college-age son allows for prediction of his cognitive performance and changes in level-of-aspiration under conditions involving negative social reinforcement. Maternal childrearing patterns in both experiments were separated into four types based upon combined ratings of control and nurmrance, proposed as the two basic dimensions of maternal behavior (Roe, 1957;Schaefer, 1959; Slatcr, 1962). These patterns were: ( a ) "Accepting" (low control-high nurturact ), ( b ) "Rejecting" (high control-low nurturant), ( c ) "Overprotective" (high control-high nurturant), and ( d ) "Ignoring" (low control-low nurcurant ) .The clearest differences were found between the superior performance of males reporting an "accepting" history and "rejected" males. "Overprotected" ~nales also tended to be conceprually inferior to "accepted" Ss and "ignored" Ss tended to perform at an inrermediate level of proficiency. Following Rodnick and Garmezy (1957), i t was proposed that a history of maternal rejection resulted in lower self-esteem and a hypersensitivity to social censure which rnediaced task-irrelevant responses ro failure cues incompatible with the conceptual responses.The second Heilbrun cnd Orr experiment ( i n press) extended the concept formation findings into motivational behavior. "Rejected" males, as predicted,

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