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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2025 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Dev Psychopathol. 2024 Feb 23;36(5):2136–2148. doi: 10.1017/S0954579424000221

Table 3.

Observational Assessments of Three Caregiving Domains Across Developmental Stages

Caregiving
Domain
Developmental
Stage
Observational Task Coding System
(sample of subscales)
Control Early Childhood-Middle Childhood Discipline Discussion
Parents and children participated in an observational assessment in which parents were tasked with discussing an issue of discipline with their child for six minutes. Parents were permitted to choose any topic they wanted and were asked to discuss the issue a way they normally would at home.
Caregiving Around Discipline System (CADS; Jones-Gordils et al., 2021)
  • Structuring/Motivation

  • Discipline scaffolding

  • Hostility

  • Democratic

  • Reasoning

Protection Middle Childhood - Adolescence Support Task
Adolescents wrote down three issues outside of the parent-child relationship that caused them to be upset, stressed, or worried. Mothers and their teens were brought into the room and seated facing one another. Adolescents were asked to share the topic as well as how they feel about it and why. The participants were then asked to discuss this topic.
Caregiving Assessment Scale (CAS; Martin et al., 2017)
  • Empathy/Concern

  • Save Haven

  • Secure Base

  • Perspective Taking

  • Responsivity

Guided Learning Early Childhood Grocery Task
Parents and children were presented with a three-dimensional grocery store board game and given a shopping list and a small shopping cart. They were then presented with a list of five rules that they needed to follow when grocery shopping.
Grocery Task Coding System (GTCS; Suor et al., 2019; Swerbenski et al., 2023)
  • Engagement/Maintaining

  • Planning/Organization

  • Intrusiveness

  • Scaffolding

  • Affect