Children's Psychological Development as a Function of the Inaccuracy of Their Mothers' Knowledge of Their Abilities

Abstract

This study was suggested by Hunt's modification of Piaget's theory of “equilibration” to include the affective and motivational aspects of psychological reactions and to produce “the problem of the match.” Because mothers who know their infant's abilities and interests are less likely to confront them with environments posing either boring undermatches or distressing overmatches, a negative correlation was expected between the inaccuracy of mothers' knowledge of their 4-year-old children's abilities and degree of their development. The Ss were SO dyads of mothers and children in their fifth year. An interviewer asked each mother to predict the responses of her child to 96 test items taken from standardized tests to represent mental ages from 3 to 9 years. Simultaneously, an examiner administered these test items to each mother's child. The numbers of false maternal predictions showed a correlation of —.80 with the numbers of test-items their children passed. Nearly all of this “effect” is a matter of overestimations, for the numbers of them showed a negative correlation of —. 77 with the numbers of test items passed. The implications and limitations of such findings for early education are discussed.