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Maltreatment can impact the earliest stages of development during which time patterns of emotion regulation and attachment begin to be established (Carlson, Cicchetti, Barnett, & Braunwald, 1989b; Cicchetti, Ganiban, & Barnett, 1991). These disruptive patterns are problematic for early moral development and are likely to play a role in the development of conduct disorders (Aber & Cicchetti, 1984). Thus, maltreated children are clearly in a high-risk situation. To examine emotion regulation, internal representations of relationships, and early moral development, the use of a play narrative story stem technique (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990; Buchsbaum & Emde, 1990) with maltreated children and a nonmaltreated disadvantaged comparison group of children is described. Representative case examples from each group are used to illustrate the effectiveness of this technique for eliciting themes about family relationships, conflicts, and their resolution or lack thereof as well as defenses and coping styles. The potential usefulness of this paradigm for clinical assessment and intervention are discussed.

Whether there is significant moral development prior to the resolution of the oedipal conflict has been a source of debate between classic psychoanalytic and more recent clinical theories. We devised a play narrative technique, using standard story stems, to elicit 36-month-olds' representations of affective themes related to moral conflicts. Since morality is both influenced by interactions with significant others and involves dealing with the roles of others in the midst of conflict, we also explored narrative representations of the family. Results indicate that children as young as 36 months represent a considerable amount of moral development in narrative form. Children were able to articulate coherent stories about rules, reciprocity, empathy, and internalized prohibitions. Most remarkable was their ability to deal with alternative outcomes in order to resolve a moral dilemma. With respect to family relationships, the majority of the children represented a range of family figures who served as reparative agents and who initiated prosocial interventions for conflict. Interestingly, the children portrayed less difficulty with separation from parents when the parents were physically absent than when they were present but not available. We conclude that our narrative story stem technique offers promising opportunities for learning more about early moral development and family relationships in 3-year-olds.

Summary Male undergraduates (N = 126) with either low, medium, or high levels of experimentally induced anxiety were exposed to either no distracting material, nonhumorous distracting material (interesting but neutral quotations), or humorous distracting material (jokes). Jokes were more effective in reducing anxiety than either quotations or no distractions. Anxiety reduction was related to the degree to which Ss perceived the jokes as funny.

The differential response to the divorce of parents on the part of preschool children was investigated by looking at the cumulative effect of stressful life events on preschool children and on their parents. Divorced, custodial mothers and nondivorced mothers of preschool children described demographic characteristics of their families and completed a behavioral checklist of the child, a parent's life events inventory, and a child's life events inventory. Preschool teachers also described the child's behavior. Being from a divorced family predicted aggression, concentration problems, and acting toward parents. Perceived inadequacy of income, low total income, and older age of mother predicted a variety of adjustment problems independent of marital status of parents. Heightened anxiety in the child occurred as a function of having inadequate income and being from a divorced family. Stressful life events in the mother were more predictive of adjustment in the child than were stressful life events in the child. Thus, different types and sources of stress may lead to different pathways of maladjustment.