Emotional expression in the family as a context for children's appraisals of interparental conflict. (original) (raw)
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Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 2014
This study examines concurrent and prospective relations between children's threat and self-blame appraisals of interparental conflict, their involvement in interparental conflict, and their internalizing and externalizing problems. 539 children aged 7-10 years old and their mothers participated in the study. They completed 3 assessments spaced 6 months apart. At each assessment, children reported on their threat and self-blame appraisals of interparental conflict, their conflict involvement, and their internalizing and externalizing problems. Mothers also reported on children's internalizing and externalizing problems. In concurrent analyses, threat and self-blame appraisals and conflict involvement were each positively and independently associated with children's adjustment problems. Threat related more strongly to internalizing problems than to externalizing problems; self-blame related more strongly to externalizing problems than to internalizing problems. Threat appraisals were associated with children's adjustment problems prospectively, but self-blame appraisals and conflict involvement were not. Although threat and self-blame appraisals and conflict involvement may each contribute to children's concurrent adjustment problems, threat appraisals appear most salient to their future adjustment problems.
Journal of Family Psychology, 2006
The present study investigated 2 questions pertinent to understanding developmental aspects of children's conflict appraisals: (a) Do 7-to 9-year-old children make reliable distinctions between their perceptions of conflict and their appraisals of threat and self-blame? (b) Do threat and blame appraisals mediate the association between exposure to interparental conflict and adjustment problems in this age group? Factor analysis of a new version of the Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale (CPIC-Y) designed for younger children showed that 179 7-to 9-year-old children distinguished properties of conflict from their appraisals of it. Moreover, as predicted by the cognitive-contextual framework, threat and self-blame appraisals mediated the link between conflict and internalizing problems but not externalizing problems. This study provides compelling evidence that appraisals of interparental conflict can be reliably measured at relatively young ages and suggests that perceptions of threat and self-blame function similarly in 7-to 9-year-olds as they do in older children.
Journal of Family Psychology, 2008
Emotional, cognitive, and family systems processes have been identified as mediators of the association between interparental conflict and children's adjustment. However, little is known about how they function in relation to one another because they have not all been assessed in the same study. This investigation examined the relations among children's exposure to parental conflict, their appraisals of threat and blame, their emotional reaction, and triangulation into parental disagreements. One hundred fifty ethnically diverse 8-to 12-year-old children and both of their parents participated in the study. Comparisons of 3 models proposing different relations among these processes indicated that they function as parallel and independent mediators of children's adjustment. Specifically, children's self-blaming attributions and emotional distress were uniquely associated with both internalizing and externalizing problems, whereas perceived threat uniquely predicted internalizing problems and triangulation uniquely predicted externalizing problems.
Journal of Child and Family Studies, 2019
Objectives Negative interparental conflict is a consistent predictor of children's functioning. In the current study, we examined conflict stimuli and children's cognitive appraisals of their parents' conflicts as predictors of children's evaluations of simulated conflict. Methods A sample of 96 children aged 9-11 years (50 males) viewed brief videotaped depictions of a male and a female actor posing as a married couple enacting conflict scenarios. Children evaluated each actor's behavior in each video on a continuum from good to bad. Trained coders coded the actors' positivity and negativity in each video. Children's cognitive appraisals of their own parents' conflicts were assessed via questionnaire (e.g., self-blame appraisals). The positivity and negativity codes and children's cognitive appraisals were tested as predictors of children's evaluations, and cognitive appraisals were tested as moderators of associations between the codes and children's evaluations. Results Codes reflecting greater negativity of either actor predicted worse child evaluations of both actors' behavior (evaluations as more "bad"). Codes reflecting greater positivity of the actors generally predicted better evaluations of the actors' behavior (evaluations of behavior as more "good"). Children's cognitive appraisals moderated some of these associations. For example, low levels of the mother actor's positivity (a lack of positivity) predicted worse child evaluations of the father actor for children who blamed themselves more for their parents' conflict than for other children. Conclusions Results are discussed in terms of advancing knowledge of children's cognitions regarding interparental conflict, and ultimately the implications of the results for children's development and psychological adjustment. Keywords Interparental conflict • Child evaluations of conflict • Child cognitions • Interparental positivity • Interparental negativity
Children’s cognitive and emotional processes in adult versus child-related inter-parental conflicts
Europe’s Journal of Psychology
In the literature, little attention has been paid to the specific impact of child-related versus adult-related inter-parental conflicts on children’s intrapersonal processes and adjustment. Aimed to advance knowledge on this topic, the cross-sectional study explores: 1) the predictive effects of the two forms of inter-parental conflicts on: a) children’s internalizing/externalizing behaviors and b) children’s cognitive appraisals, emotional distress, and triangulation; 2) the mediating role of children’s cognitive appraisals, emotional distress, and triangulation, in the association between adult-related vs child-related conflict and children’s adjustment. Seventy-five school-aged children and their parents completed measures of inter-parental conflict, cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes and child adjustment. The results indicated that: 1) higher levels of adult-related inter-parental conflict promoted children’s internalizing behaviors, through the mediation of perceived...
Children Perception of Inter-Parental Conflicts and Their Cognitive Emotion Regulation
2014
4 Abstract: Basic aim of the present study is to explore the effect of inter-parental conflicts on the cognitive emotion regulation of children, based upon their own perception of these conflicts. Convenient sampling has been used to collect data from children age 9-12 years (50 boys and 50 girls) from different areas of Lahore city. For this study, two scales (CPIC and CERQ-k) are used. These scales are translated into Urdu by the researchers themselves. The results of this study suggest that cognitive emotional regulation emerges as significant predictor, =.35, t =.19, p .06 and R is.06, whereas boys have significant effect as p <.00. The 2 results also indicate that there is significant effect of CERQ-k t (98) = 2.69, p <.00. It has been illustrated that high level of interpersonal conflicts among parents may also lead their children and people related to them towards clinical pathologies that may be dangerous for their future lives. Furthermore, the study concludes that so...
Developmental Family Processes and Interparental Conflict: Patterns of Microlevel Influences
Developmental Psychology, 2010
Although frequent calls are made for the study of effects of children on families and mutual influence processes within families, little empirical progress has been made. We address these questions at the level of micro processes during marital conflict, including children's influence on marital conflict and parents' influence on each other. Participants were 111 cohabiting couples with a child (55 males, 56 females) aged 8 -16 years. Data were drawn from parents' diary reports of interparental conflict over 15 days, analyzed using dynamic systems modeling tools. Child emotions and behavior during conflicts were associated with interparental positivity, negativity, and resolution at the end of the same conflicts. For example, children's agentic behavior was associated with more marital conflict resolution whereas child negativity was linked with more marital negativity. Regarding parents' influence on each other, among the findings, husbands' and wives' influence on themselves from one conflict to the next was indicated, and total number of conflicts predicted greater influence of wives' positivity on husbands' positivity. Contributions of these findings to the understanding of developmental family processes are discussed, including implications for advanced understanding of interrelations between child and adult functioning and development.
Family processes that shape the impact of interparental conflict on adolescents
Development and …, 2004
This study draws on the family systems concepts of triangulation and wholism to investigate how interparental conflict may affect adolescents' psychological adjustment. An ethnically and socioeconomically diverse samplẽ N ϭ 388! of 14-to 18-year-olds completed measures of interparental conflict, family relationships, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems. We found that triangulation into parental disagreements mediated the association between parental conflict and both internalizing and externalizing problems. Adolescents exposed to more frequent, intense, and poorly resolved conflict were more likely to feel triangulated, but this association was moderated by the nature of the alliances they had with their parents. Specifically, at low levels of interparental conflict, adolescents who had substantially stronger alliances with one parent than the other reported greater triangulation than those with more balanced alliances. At high levels of conflict, these groups reported similar degrees of triangulation. We also found that supportive parent-child relationships reduced adolescents' appraisals of threat and self-blame for interparental conflict, while more empathic relationships with siblings increased these appraisals. Finally, close relationships with fathers acted as a protective factor that reduced symptoms of maladjustment.
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 2009
Past research has emphasised the importance of children's appraisals of the threat posed by parent conflict for understanding links between interparental conflict and child outcomes. However, little is known about what it is that children actually find threatening about parent conflict. Children (n=236) aged 10-16 years were recruited to examine the relative contribution of four specific threat subtypes-fear of parent conflict escalating, fear of being drawn into parent conflict, fear of parent conflict resulting in family breakdown, and fear of parent conflict disrupting parent/child attachment relationships-in explaining links between interparental conflict and child internalising adjustment. Results showed that children's worries about being drawn into parent conflict mediated the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalising adjustment. Fear of interparental conflict disrupting parent/child attachment bonds mediated the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalising problems for girls, but not boys. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of considering multiple dimensions of threat for advancing understanding of the processes underlying the interparental conflict/child adjustment relationship.