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Maternal control is a major dimension of parenting and has different meanings, practices, and potential consequences across cultures. The present study aimed to identify and compare mothers' conceptualizations of parenting control across four cultures to reveal a more nuanced understanding regarding the meaning and practices of control: European American, Chinese immigrant, Korean immigrant, and Turkish. Using a semistructured open-ended interview, 100 European American, 102 U.S. Chinese immigrant, 103 U.S. Korean immigrant, and 109 Turkish mothers of preschool-aged children reported the ratings of importance, specific reasons, and strategies for exerting control over their children in daily life. Results revealed both shared and unique conceptualizations of maternal control across four cultures. Specifically, all mothers reported that it is important to express maternal control over their children in order to set behavioral norms/standards, maintain child safety, support social relations and respect for others, provide guidance, and guide moral development. Moreover, mothers discussed utilizing nonphysical punishment, setting and maintaining rules, reasoning/negotiating, consistency, physical punishment and verbal control, showing parents' serious/stern attitude, correction, and psychological control forms of control. However, the levels at which mothers emphasize the different reasons and strategies varied across cultures, reflecting culturally emphasized values. The findings of the present study further enrich our understanding of the complexities of maternal control across cultures.

Objectives: This paper investigates the associations of social competence with cognitive representation and communication skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), by measuring these skills in an expansive way through assessing both mental and internal-state understanding, and verbal and non-verbal communication. Methods: The data were collected from 45 Turkish children (M[subscript age]=8.52 years, SD=3.05, min-max=3-14) with a diagnosis of ASD. Individual assessments were used to measure mental- and internal-state understanding. Teacher-rated scales were used to assess child's verbal and non-verbal communication skills, and social competence. Results: The results showed that social competence, cognitive representation, verbal and non-verbal communication skills were all significantly associated, but over and above cognitive representation skills and verbal communication, non-verbal communication had a salient role in adaptive social relationships of children with ASD. Conclusions: These findings have important applied implications for intervention studies and suggest that improvements of non-verbal communication skills in children with ASD might be important for increasing their positive social relations.

Parental psychological control has previously been related to negative developmental outcomes. However, fewer studies examined the cultural factors associated with parental psychological control. Several studies suggested that psychological control is used more by mothers in collectivistic (as compared to individualistic) cultures yet did not examine the mother's personal endorsement of the cultural values. This approach ignores the widely reported findings showing within country heterogeneity. In this study, we examined maternal adherence to collectivistic values and their psychologically controlling behaviour directed towards their preschool children. We also examined the indirect role of perceived normativeness of the psychologically controlling behaviour in the association between adherence to collectivistic values and using psychologically controlling behaviours. We hypothesized that mothers who endorsed collectivistic values more would perceive psychologically controlling parenting as more normative and in turn would display more psychological control. To test our research question, we collected data from 318 Turkish mothers, who had at least one preschool‐aged child (child Mage = 59.46 months, SD = 9.23; range = 34–80 months; 160 males). The descriptive analyses are planned to be run in SPSS and path analyses in MPlus are planned for examining the hypothesized mediational model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empathy, sympathy, and emotion regulation are core components of social–emotional development. Regulating vicariously induced negative emotions is thought to support feeling empathy and sympathy for others in need, but empirical evidence for such effects is mixed. Moreover, despite the longstanding conceptual distinction between empathy and sympathy, most researchers refer to and measure these constructs interchangeably. This meta-analysis examined associations between emotion regulation and empathy and/or sympathy in childhood and adolescence, as well as potential methodological, study, and sample moderators. Analyses were conducted on 58 studies (75 effect sizes; N = 25,831). There was a significant and positive overall association between emotion regulation and empathy/sympathy (r =.19, p <.001); however, most scales assessing empathy were conflated with other constructs. Accounting for conflation, emotion regulation was related to sympathy (r =.24, p <.001) but not empathy (r =.04, p =.38). Moreover, the association between emotion regulation and empathy/sympathy was not significant when baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and RSA reactivity were examined as proxies of emotion regulation. Results were largely similar across sample characteristics (e.g., age group, sex, and culture). Conceptual implications for differentiating empathy and sympathy are discussed, as well as methodological considerations to maximize the quality and clarity of research on emotion regulation, empathy, and sympathy. Public Significance Statement: Empathy, sympathy, and emotion regulation are regarded as interrelated cornerstones of social–emotional development. This meta-analysis shows that higher emotion regulation is associated with more sympathy for others in need but not with more empathic sharing of others' emotions. It provides substantial empirical support for differentiating empathy from sympathy to better understand and promote social–emotional capacities in children and adolescents. Overall, the results imply that the two pillars of social–emotional development (emotion regulation and sympathy) are interrelated, and emotion regulation might be a key factor to promote sympathy (instead of empathy) in childhood and adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to investigate social competence in children with orthopaedic disability and its concurrent relations to child's temperament, health condition, and maternal warmth. Participants were 68 Turkish children (mean = 5.94 years) with chronic orthopaedic disability and their mothers coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Mother ratings were used to measure social competence, temperament, general health condition, and parental warmth. The attending physician rated the severity of orthopaedic disability. Attentional focusing, emotional reactivity, and child's sex significantly predicted social competence. Age at first operation was slightly negatively associated with reactivity. The findings revealed the importance of emotional and attentional regulation for social functioning in children with orthopaedic disability, and pointed to the susceptibility of reactivity to environmental conditions. The study suggested that social functioning of youth with orthopaedic disability might benefit from temperament-based intervention and prevention programmes.

This study examined bystanders' judgements of bullying and their inclusivity towards refugee victims and ingroup bully peers. Participants included 587 Turkish adolescents (Mage = 13.14, SD = 1.60) who were presented with two stories: intergroup (Syrian refugee victim) and intragroup (Turkish victim) bullying. They indicated acceptability of bullying, retaliation, and how likely they would be to include victims and bullies in different social contexts. Empathy, prejudice, desired social distance, and peer norms towards Syrian refugees were examined as predictors. Adolescents in schools with a higher number of Syrian peers were more likely to expect they would include the Syrian victim than adolescents in schools with a lower number of Syrian peers. Further, adolescents with higher empathy were more likely to include the Syrian victim while adolescents with higher prejudice and desired social distance were less likely to include the Syrian victim. The results highlight the importance of attending to bystanders' future interactions with victims and bullies, as bystanders have the opportunity to challenge injustice by promoting inclusive school climates in diverse societies. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]