Maternal Childrearing Control History and Subsequent Cognitive and Personality Functioning of the Offspring

Abstract

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,

Perceived maternal child rearing and effects of delayed reinforcement upon concept acquisition.

“…A prior experiment (Heilbrun & Orr, 1965), using the same concept-identification task and the same kind of female college subjects as employed in the present experiment, found HC-HN subjects to be superior in performance to HC-LN subjects under immediate reinforcement conditions. Therefore, the experimental prediction for HC subjects, considering conditions of both immediate and delayed reinforcement, is that of an interaction; HC-HN subjects will be superior to HC-LN subjects when reinforcement is immediate and HC-LN subjects will be superior to HC-HN subjects when reinforcement is delayed.…”

“…The Heilbrun and Orr (1965) experiment also indicated the performance superiority of LC-LN to LC-HN females. However, there is less basis for predicting a systematic change from immediate to delayed reinforcement conditions with LC subjects; accordingly, no interaction was predicted for LC subjects differing in level of perceived maternal nurturance as they performed under conditions of immediate and delayed reinforcement.…”

Underachievement as Related to Perceived Maternal Child Rearing and Academic Conditions of Reinforcement

“…Some evidence in support of this can be found in an earlier study by Heilbrun and Orr (1965) in which personality comparisons among the four child-rearing groups found the HC-HN male (along with the LC-HN male) relatively stronger on a triad of "ego-control" variablesneed achievement, endurance, and order. The HC-HN mother may be the type of parent who fosters a home environment in which habits facilitating academic achievement are learned by the son.…”

Maternal child-rearing experience and self-reinforcement effectiveness.

“…A standard procedure has been employed to separate late adolescents into classes of maternal child-rearing history based on filial ratings of the mother's control and nurturance behavior. Systematic relationships have been found between these child-rearing patterns and the effects of reinforcement under a wide range of external conditions including direct reinforcement (Heilbrun & Gillard, 1966;Heilbrun, Gillard, & Harrell, 1965;Heilbrun & Orr, 1965, 1966Heilbrun, Orr, & Harrell, 1966), withheld or reduced reinforcement (Heilbrun, Harrell, & Gillard, 1967;Heilbrun & Waters, 1968), vicarious reinforcement (Heilbrun, in press), delayed reinforcement (Heilbrun, 1969), reinforcement cues presented as interfering stimuli (Heilbrun, 1968), and projective responses to reinf or cement cues (Heilbrun & Tiemeyer, 1968). Based upon the success to date in relating child-rearing experience to external reinforcement effects, it follows that the former might also hold some functional ties with self-reinforcement effects.…”