Aletha C Huston
Biographic Data
| ID | 99799 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aletha C Huston |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aletha C |
| FAMILY NAME | Huston |
| SIGNATURE | HUSTON A C |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1259 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 57 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1961 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Child Care and Child Development
Thoughts on “Probability Values and Human Values in Evaluating Single-Sex Education”
Time spent in child care
Children who experience early and extensive child care, especially center-based care, are rated by teachers as having more externalizing behavior problems than are other children. This association is reduced, but not eliminated, when care is of high quality, and it varies by socioeconomic disadvantage and the type of behavior assessed. We examine the processes that may account for the quantity effect, concluding that it occurs primarily among rel…
Developmental changes in impacts of an antipoverty experiment on low-income children’s structured out-of-school time
The experiment reported here tested impacts of New Hope, an employment-based poverty intervention for adults on developmental patterns of children's participation in structured out-of-school activities, using a cross-sequential design spanning ages 6 through 19. New Hope increased participation in activities (lessons, sports, religious, clubs, community centers, service). Its effects did not vary significantly across age, time of measurement, or …
Are Middle Schools Harmful? The Role of Transition Timing, Classroom Quality and School Characteristics
The long‐term effects on children and adolescents of a policy providing work supports for low‐income parents
New Hope, an employment-based poverty-reduction intervention for adults evaluated in a random-assignment experimental design, had positive impacts on children's achievement and social behavior two and five years after random assignment. The question addressed in this paper was the following: Did the positive effects of New Hope on younger children diminish or even reverse when children reached the challenges of adolescence (eight years after rand…
Human Development in Societal Context
Low family socioeconomic position is a net of related conditions—low income, material deprivation, single-parent family structure, low educational level, minority ethnic group membership, and immigrant status. According to ecological theory, proximal contexts experienced by children, including family, material resources, out-of-school experiences, schools, neighborhoods, and peers, are mediators of poverty effects. Developmental timing of exposur…
A tale of two methods
We apply instrumental variables (IV) techniques to a pooled data set of employment-focused experiments to examine the relation between type of preschool childcare and subsequent externalizing problem behavior for a large sample of low-income children. To assess the potential usefulness of this approach for addressing biases that can confound causal inferences in child care research, we compare instrumental variables results with those obtained us…
Increases in Maternal Education and Young Children's Language Skills
Maternal education is a strong correlate of children’s language, cognitive, and academic development. In most prior research, mothers’ education has been treated as a fixed characteristic, yet many mothers, particularly economically and educationally disadvantaged mothers, attend school after the birth of their children. In the present study, we use longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early…
Depressive Symptoms and Economic Outcomes of Low‐Income Women
We review research that connects depression and depressive symptoms to employment and economic factors for low‐income women. Women who have low incomes and are unemployed or underemployed are vulnerable to mental health distress. The strain of balancing work and family life can be exacerbated by poor psychological health or nonsufficient economic resources. Research on the barriers that impede self‐sufficiency can lead to policies that improve th…
Studying Media Effects on Children
Effects of Employment‐Based Programs on Families by Prior Levels of Disadvantage
This study examines how welfare and employment policies affect subpopulations of low-income families that have different levels of initial disadvantage. Education, prior earnings, and welfare receipt are used to measure disadvantage. The analysis of data from experiments suggests that employment-based programs have no effects on economic well-being among the least-disadvantaged low-income, single-parent families, but they have positive effects on…
The Timing of Family Instability and Children's Social Development
This study extends the growing literature of family instability by investigating the significance of its timing for children's social adjustment. We find that more than a third of the 1,364 elementary school children in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development experienced some family structure change. Their cumulative level of family instability was associated with multiple indicators of social development at the end of elementar…
Structural and process features in three types of child care for children from high and low income families
Effects of a Poverty Intervention Policy Demonstration on Parenting and Child Behavior
Objectives. This study compares two explanations for the effects of an employment‐based anti‐poverty intervention, the New Hope project, on parenting and child behavior. (1) Did the New Hope intervention directly affect child behavior and, if it did, is this the result of New Hope effects on earlier parenting practices? (2) Did the New Hope intervention directly affect parenting practices and, if it did, is this the result of New Hope effects on …
Socioeconomic status, schooling, and the developmental trajectories of adolescents
The socioeconomic stratification of American society profoundly influences how the life course unfolds by shaping various developmental pathways as well as the connections among these pathways. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of American adolescents, this study charted trajectories of personal control and parental consultation from middle school to the end of high school and then examined how various combinations of these trajectori…
School readiness and later achievement
Using 6 longitudinal data sets, the authors estimate links between three key elements of school readiness--school-entry academic, attention, and socioemotional skills--and later school reading and math achievement. In an effort to isolate the effects of these school-entry skills, the authors ensured that most of their regression models control for cognitive, attention, and socioemotional skills measured prior to school entry, as well as a host of…
Family Instability and Children's Early Problem Behavior
This study investigated the association between family instability and children's problem behavior during the transition to first grade. In a sample (n = 1,015) drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we found that a quarter of sample members experienced at least one family transition between birth and age 6. Instability was also related to family structure at birth: those born into cohabiting parent families experie…
Child Care Assistance Policies Can Affect the Use of Center-Based Care for Children in Low-Income Families
This article examines the effects of 13 experimental welfare and employment programs on single parents' use of different types of child care for toddlers, preschool-age, and young school-age children. Policies designed to increase employment (e.g., earnings supplements and mandated participation) did so, and consequently increased parents' use of nonmaternal child care. This study finds that only programs with policies designed to increase famili…
Impacts on Children of a Policy to Promote Employment and Reduce Poverty for Low-Income Parents
The impacts of New Hope, a program to increase parent employment and reduce poverty, were measured 5 years after parents were randomly assigned to program or control groups. New Hope had positive effects on children's school achievement, motivation, and social behavior, primarily for boys, across the age range 6-16. In comparison to impacts measured 2 years after program onset, effects on achievement were robust, but effects on social behavior we…
Can child care assistance in welfare and employment programs support the employment of low‐income families
Policymakers have long recognized child care as a key ingredient in low‐income parents' employability. We examine the effects of expansions in child care policies that were bundled with a mix of employment‐related policies and implemented as part of several random assignment studies on families' child care access and cost. Almost all of these welfare and employment programs increased employment and led to concomitant increases in the use of child…
Economic Well-Being and Children's Social Adjustment
Using latent variable structural equation modeling, a family economic stress model that links economic well-being to child well-being in an ethnically diverse, low-income sample of 419 elementary school-age children was evaluated. The sample was 57% African American and 28% Hispanic, and most families were headed by single mothers. The results provided support for the position that family process is a critical mediator of the effects of economic …
From research to policy
Research can contribute to policy by asking good questions, using the best methods we have, and being ready when the policy issues arise
Family and individual predictors of child care use by low-income families in different policy contexts
Multilevel Factors Influencing Maternal Stress During the First Three Years
This prospective study applies family stress theory to the influence of personal, child, and familial factors on a mother's parenting stress during the first 3 years of her infant's life. Participants included 134 mothers and their infants at ages 1, 6, 15, 24, and 36 months from one site of a multisite, longitudinal study. Mother's personality was most predictive of parenting stress cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Intimacy with partner red…
School readiness and later achievement
Using 6 longitudinal data sets, the authors estimate links between three key elements of school readiness--school-entry academic, attention, and socioemotional skills--and later school reading and math achievement. In an effort to isolate the effects of these school-entry skills, the authors ensured that most of their regression models control for cognitive, attention, and socioemotional skills measured prior to school entry, as well as a host of…
Family Instability and Children's Early Problem Behavior
This study investigated the association between family instability and children's problem behavior during the transition to first grade. In a sample (n = 1,015) drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we found that a quarter of sample members experienced at least one family transition between birth and age 6. Instability was also related to family structure at birth: those born into cohabiting parent families experie…
Structural and process features in three types of child care for children from high and low income families
The Timing of Family Instability and Children's Social Development
This study extends the growing literature of family instability by investigating the significance of its timing for children's social adjustment. We find that more than a third of the 1,364 elementary school children in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development experienced some family structure change. Their cumulative level of family instability was associated with multiple indicators of social development at the end of elementar…
How young children spend their time
Time-use diaries were collected over a 3-year period for 2 cohorts of 2- and 4-year-old children. TV viewing declined with age. Time spent in reading and educational activities increased with age on weekdays but declined on weekends. Time-use patterns were sex-stereotyped, and sex differences increased with age. As individuals' time in educational activities, social interaction, and video games increased, their time watching entertainment TV decl…
Family and individual predictors of child care use by low-income families in different policy contexts
Development of sex-typed play behavior in toddlers
Multilevel Factors Influencing Maternal Stress During the First Three Years
This prospective study applies family stress theory to the influence of personal, child, and familial factors on a mother's parenting stress during the first 3 years of her infant's life. Participants included 134 mothers and their infants at ages 1, 6, 15, 24, and 36 months from one site of a multisite, longitudinal study. Mother's personality was most predictive of parenting stress cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Intimacy with partner red…
Identification as a process of incidental learning
Impacts on Children of a Policy to Promote Employment and Reduce Poverty for Low-Income Parents
The impacts of New Hope, a program to increase parent employment and reduce poverty, were measured 5 years after parents were randomly assigned to program or control groups. New Hope had positive effects on children's school achievement, motivation, and social behavior, primarily for boys, across the age range 6-16. In comparison to impacts measured 2 years after program onset, effects on achievement were robust, but effects on social behavior we…
Can child care assistance in welfare and employment programs support the employment of low‐income families
Policymakers have long recognized child care as a key ingredient in low‐income parents' employability. We examine the effects of expansions in child care policies that were bundled with a mix of employment‐related policies and implemented as part of several random assignment studies on families' child care access and cost. Almost all of these welfare and employment programs increased employment and led to concomitant increases in the use of child…
"Words from "Sesame Street
The study is a longitudinal investigation of preschool children's viewing of Sesame Street and their vocabulary development
Socioeconomic status, schooling, and the developmental trajectories of adolescents
The socioeconomic stratification of American society profoundly influences how the life course unfolds by shaping various developmental pathways as well as the connections among these pathways. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of American adolescents, this study charted trajectories of personal control and parental consultation from middle school to the end of high school and then examined how various combinations of these trajectori…
Young children's perceptions of television reality
Five- and 7-year-old children judged factuality and social realism of favorite TV shows and test clips in pairs matched for content. In each pair one was news or documentary format, the other fictional drama. All children understood that fictional programs were not factual. Children correctly discriminated the purposes and intended audience of news from those of documentaries. Children discriminated factuality by genre of program, and genre of pr…
Gender-Role Cognition in Three-Year-Old Boys and Girls
Development of television viewing patterns in early childhood
A 2-year longitudinal study of children from ages 3 to 5 and 5 to 7 investigated age changes and environmental influences on TV viewing
A tale of two methods
We apply instrumental variables (IV) techniques to a pooled data set of employment-focused experiments to examine the relation between type of preschool childcare and subsequent externalizing problem behavior for a large sample of low-income children. To assess the potential usefulness of this approach for addressing biases that can confound causal inferences in child care research, we compare instrumental variables results with those obtained us…
Time spent in child care
Children who experience early and extensive child care, especially center-based care, are rated by teachers as having more externalizing behavior problems than are other children. This association is reduced, but not eliminated, when care is of high quality, and it varies by socioeconomic disadvantage and the type of behavior assessed. We examine the processes that may account for the quantity effect, concluding that it occurs primarily among rel…
Televised Occupational Stereotypes and their Effects on Early Adolescents
By the mid 1980s, prime time television contained frequent portrayals of females in traditionally male occupations such as lawyer, police officer, and private detective. To determine whether young people's gender schemas about such occupations have been affected by these portrayals, fifth and sixth grade students were questioned about stereotypically feminine and masculine occupations they encounter frequently in real life, occupations often show…
Television violence and aggression
VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study by Friedrich-Cofer and Huston was to provide a literature review and critique of the debate over the relationship between viewing violence on television and actual aggression and violence. This study supported the majority of the literature which claims that a relationship does exist and discussed the theoretical and social policy implications of this relationship. METHODOLOGY: This literature …
Children's comprehension of televised formal features with masculine and feminine connotations
Modification of preschool sex-typed behaviors by participation in adult-structured activities
Pace and continuity of television programs
Children's tv programs can be distinguished by the processing demands of their format and the pace with which changes occur. High-continuity programs are stories requiring temporal integration of successive scenes for full comprehension. Low-continuity programs are in format: Successive bits are independent of one another, and temporal integration across bits is not required for comprehension. Pace is denned as rate of scene and character change …
Are Middle Schools Harmful? The Role of Transition Timing, Classroom Quality and School Characteristics
Effects of Employment‐Based Programs on Families by Prior Levels of Disadvantage
This study examines how welfare and employment policies affect subpopulations of low-income families that have different levels of initial disadvantage. Education, prior earnings, and welfare receipt are used to measure disadvantage. The analysis of data from experiments suggests that employment-based programs have no effects on economic well-being among the least-disadvantaged low-income, single-parent families, but they have positive effects on…
Identification as a process of incidental learning
Communicating More than Content
Aletha C. Huston, John C. Wright, Ellen Wartella, Mabel L. Rice, Bruce A. Watkins, Toni Campbell, Richard Potts; Communicating More than Content: Formal Fe
Children's understanding of the forms of television
Children's understanding of television depends on two factors: their growing independence from its sensory demands and their increasing familiarity with its formal features of production
Children, Television, and Sex-Role Stereotyping
Effects of induced success/failure and attributions on the problem-solving behavior of psychologically androgynous and feminine women
The aim of the present study was to examine the relation between masculinity and femininity in women and their responses to induced success or failure. Also experimentally manipulated were the subjects' performance attributions. Psychologically androgynous and feminine women either succeeded or failed at a concept formation task and were provided with internal, external, or no causal attributions for their performance. Then a second concept forma…
A matter of form
A matter of form
Pace and continuity of television programs
Children's tv programs can be distinguished by the processing demands of their format and the pace with which changes occur. High-continuity programs are stories requiring temporal integration of successive scenes for full comprehension. Low-continuity programs are in format: Successive bits are independent of one another, and temporal integration across bits is not required for comprehension. Pace is denned as rate of scene and character change …
Children's comprehension of televised formal features with masculine and feminine connotations
The development of sex typing
Development of sex-typed play behavior in toddlers
Gender-Related Personality Attributes and Reaction to Success/Failure
The effects of success and failure on task performance, and attributions about performance, were compared for high and low instrumental college women. For the high instrumental group, success facilitated task performance, whereas failure had no debilitating effect; for the low instrumental group, success had no effect on subsequent performance, whereas failure interfered with it. High instrumental women attributed their success primarily to inter…
Modification of preschool sex-typed behaviors by participation in adult-structured activities
Television violence and aggression
Television violence and aggression
VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study by Friedrich-Cofer and Huston was to provide a literature review and critique of the debate over the relationship between viewing violence on television and actual aggression and violence. This study supported the majority of the literature which claims that a relationship does exist and discussed the theoretical and social policy implications of this relationship. METHODOLOGY: This literature …
Televised Occupational Stereotypes and their Effects on Early Adolescents
By the mid 1980s, prime time television contained frequent portrayals of females in traditionally male occupations such as lawyer, police officer, and private detective. To determine whether young people's gender schemas about such occupations have been affected by these portrayals, fifth and sixth grade students were questioned about stereotypically feminine and masculine occupations they encounter frequently in real life, occupations often show…
Social Interactions and Play Patterns of Parents and Toddlers with Feminine, Masculine, and Neutral Toys
Yvonne M. Caldera, Aletha C. Huston, Marion O'Brien, Social Interactions and Play Patterns of Parents and Toddlers with Feminine, Masculine, and Neutral Toys, Child Development, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), pp. 70-76
How Children Reacted to Televised Coverage of the Space Shuttle Disaster
Overall, boys and girls tended to react according to gender stereotypes of impersonal regret versus personal involvement, but the strongest relations were for the two patterns themselves, with either a cognitive or affective response dominating
Public policy and children's television
Television occupies a large part of children's time from an early age. Among its many functions, edu- cation, social learning (prosocial as well as antisocial), and selling products are well documented by research ev- idence. Commercial programming for children in the United States consists primarily of cartoons and enter- tainment shows; educational and informative programs are supplied by public broadcasting and, to some degree, by a few cable …
Public policy and children's television
"Words from "Sesame Street
The study is a longitudinal investigation of preschool children's viewing of Sesame Street and their vocabulary development
Development of television viewing patterns in early childhood
A 2-year longitudinal study of children from ages 3 to 5 and 5 to 7 investigated age changes and environmental influences on TV viewing
Children in poverty
The numbers of children living in poverty in the United States increased dramatically during the 1980s and remains high. Why are so many children growing up in poor families? What are the effects of poverty on children's physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development? What role can public policy and policy research play in preventing or alleviating the damaging effects of poverty on children? Children in poverty examines these questions, …
Big World, Small Screen
Children and Poverty
The state-of-the-art research in this volume is based on complex, multidimensional conceptions of poverty. Current research goes beyond description to emphasize analysis of processes by which effects occur and variations in effects associated with race, gender, and ethnicity. Child care, school, neighborhood, and community are studied as well as family contexts. The child outcomes investigated include both intellectual development and socioemotio…
Psychology (50 works) · Developmental psychology (39 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (23 works) · Social Psychology (21 works) · Child Development and Digital Technology (16 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Medicine (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (11 works) · Child development (11 works)