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- The social information processing model in child physical abuse and neglect: a meta-analytic reviewPublication . Camilo, Cláudia; Garrido, M. V.; Calheros, M. M.Background: Child maltreatment has been recently examined from a cognitive-behavioral perspective. The Social Information Processing (SIP) model specifies how parental cognitions can be associated with child physical abuse and neglect and suggests that maltreating parents do not adequately respond to the child’s needs due to errors/bias in the cognitive processing of childrelated information. Objective: This study provides two separate meta-analytic reviews of research exploring the role of parents’ socio-cognitive variables in shaping child physical abuse and child neglect, identifying the association of each SIP stage to these types of maltreatment. Method: After a four-phase systematic literature search based in PRISMA with inter-judges’ agreement, 130 effect sizes were extracted from the 51 studies selected. Results: Overall, the effect sizes of the four cognitive stages of the model were significant for physical abuse and ranged from small (r = .190 for parents’ interpretations of children’s signals) to moderate (r = .315 for parents’ perceptions of children’s signals). Regarding neglect, only the overall effect of parent’s preexisting schemata was significant but small in magnitude (r = .231). Conclusions: The results of these multilevel meta-analyses support the general hypothesis that physically abusive parents may incur in biases in processing child-related information, but further research is still required regarding neglect. Theoretically this work is likely to provide a more solid framework to understand parental cognitions underlying child maltreatment with potential implications for evaluation and intervention with maltreating or at-risk parents.
- Parental attitudes in child maltreatmentPublication . Camilo, Cláudia; Garrido, M. V.; Calheros, M. M.An information-processing approach to maladaptive parenting suggests that high-risk and maltreating parents are likely to hold inaccurate and biased preexisting cognitive schemata about child development and child rearing. Importantly, these schemas, which may include values, beliefs, expectations, and attitudes, are known to influence the way parents perceive and subsequently act toward their children. However, the few studies specifically addressing parental attitudes only considered global maltreatment, not distinguishing abuse from neglect. Moreover, few have considered dual-process models of cognition, relying mostly on the explicit level of parental attitudes that can be prone to various biases. Based on the Social Information Processing (SIP) model of child abuse and neglect, this study examines the association of parents preexisting cognitive schemata, namely explicit and implicit parental attitudes, and child abuse and neglect. A convenience sample of 201 mothers (half with at least one child referred to child protection services) completed a measure of explicit parental attitudes and a speed-accuracy task related to parenting. Abuse and neglect were measured with self-report and professionals-report instruments. Overall, the results support the hypothesis that maladaptive parenting is related with more biased preexisting cognitive schemas, namely attitudes related to parenting, but only for neglect and particularly when reported by professionals. Moreover, the results observed with both the explicit and implicit measures of attitudes were convergent, with mothers presenting more inadequate explicit attitudes also exhibiting an overall lower performance in the implicit attitudes task. This study is likely to contribute to the SIP framework of child abuse and neglect, particularly for the elucidation of the sociocognitive factors underlying maladaptive parenting, while also providing relevant cues for prevention and intervention programs.