The minimizing of blaming attributions and behaviors in delinquent families.

Abstract

Parents' data were evaluated in three studies of families with a delinquent adolescent. Families were provided with different forms of a positive versus negative interactional (attributional) context. Study 1 demonstrated that the negative context elicited significantly more negative behaviors than did the positive context when parents interacted with each other and with their delinquent adolescent. Study 2 demonstrated that the dispositional attributions of parents were influenced by the manipulation of set, with a dissatisfied set producing negative blaming attributions and a satisfied set producing nonblaming, positive attributions. Study 3 demonstrated that parents' negative sets regarding their adolescent's negative behaviors, once established and discussed by the family for 5 min, were unresponsive to a subsequent positive reattribution regarding those behaviors. Taken together, the data provide some support for reattribution techniques such as relabeling. Yet, the data question the ease with which such techniques can be successful and challenge proponents of such techniques to develop methodologically sound empirical demonstrations of their effectiveness.

Attachment and Adolescent Psychosocial Functioning

“…These techniques may be differentially effective depending upon the adolescents' orientation toward attachment experiences and may be truly effective only when adolescents are not dismissing of attachment. The interaction of attachment organization with maternal control strategies found in this study also suggests an explanation for why studies that have simply related attachment to externalizing behavior problems (without considering possible moderating effects of maternal control strategies) have yielded somewhat conflicting results (Ainsworth et al, 1978;Alexander et al, 1989;Lay et al, 1989;Russo et al, 1981;Sroufe et al, 1984;Waters et al, 1979).…”

“…In adolescent research, dismissing attachments have been more strongly linked to conduct disorders than preoccupied attachments in a sample of insecure, hospitalized adolescents (Rosenstein & Horowitz, 1996). Research at other stages of the life span has been inconclusive: In adulthood, insecure attachment has been linked to criminal behavior (Allen, Hauser, & Borman-Spurrell, 1996); yet, in childhood, researchers have only inconsistently found links from insecurity to child noncompliance (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978;Alexander, Waldron, Barton, & Mas, 1989;Lay, Waters, & Park, 1989;RUSSO, Cataldo, & Cushing, 1981;Sroufe et al, 1984;Waters et al, 1979). No studies have considered relations between attachment security and delinquent and externalizing behaviors in adolescence nor con-sidered the possible interaction of attachment organization with parental behavioral control styles in predicting externalizing behavior problems.…”

Empirically Supported Family‐Based Treatments for Conduct Disorder and Delinquency in Adolescents

“…Additional results showed that therapist structuring and relationship skills were linked with higher rates of treatment completion. Although several process studies with undergraduate students (Morris, Alexander, & Turner, 1991) and graduate student therapists (Alexander, Waldron, Barton, & Mas, 1989; Robbins, Alexander, Newell, & Turner, 1996; Robbins, Alexander, & Turner, 2000) published during the next 30 years showed that reframing, a central component of FFT, was associated with decreased youth and family blaming and defensiveness, the investigators did not attempt to link process variables (e.g., family defensiveness) with youth outcomes such as recidivism. Hence, the ultimate value of reframing remains unknown.…”

Parental, child-centered attributions and outcome: A meta-analytic review with conceptual and methodological implications

“…With respect to populations, the studies include conduct-disordered children and their mothers (Alexander, Waldron, & Barton, 1989;Baden & Howe, 1992), children with learning problems and their mothers (Compas, Friedland-Bandes, Bastein, & Adelman, 1981;Grace, Kelly, & McCain, 1993), enuretic children and their mothers (Butler, Brewin, & Forsythe, 1986), abused and neglected children and their mothers (Larrance & Twentyman, 1983), families in family therapy (Munton & Antaki, 1988), and public school students and their mothers (Fincham & Bradbury, 1987a). Measures of outcome and adjustment range from a one-item question about mothers' satisfaction with their relationship to their child (Fincham & Bradbury, 1987a), to response to family therapy (Munton & Antaki, 1988).…”