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Understanding parent reports of children's attention behaviors
Role of children's attention skills, temperament, and home chaos
Brown, D. D., Weatherholt, T., & Burns, B. M. (2010). Understanding parent reports of children's attention behaviors: Role of children's attention skills, temperament, and home chaos. Journal of Early Childhood and Infant Psychology, 6, 41-58.
This study aimed to investigate factors that influence the assessment of child attention behaviors by parents from low-income households. This study extends previous research on attention by investigating child and environmental factors as predictors of parent reports of attention behaviors. Questionnaires from 123 parents from low-income households concerning child attention behaviors, child temperament, and home environment were completed. Child attention skills were assessed using three computerized attention network tasks. The hypothesis that child attention skills, child temperament, and the home environment would be additive in its predictive relation to parent reports of problem attention behaviors was supported. Specifically, higher ratings of problem attention behavior were predicted by lower executive attention skills, lower effortful control, higher surgency/extraversion and negative affect, and higher home chaos. The results have implications for intervention development, research on parent reports, and the diagnoses of attention problems.