Children’s cognitive and emotional processes in adult versus child-related inter-parental conflicts (original) (raw)
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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 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.
Emotional expression in the family as a context for children's appraisals of interparental conflict.
Journal of Family Psychology, 2007
The cognitive contextual framework proposes that the emotional climate in the family plays a role in shaping how children perceive and evaluate interparental conflict. This hypothesis was tested in a sample of 144 8-to 12-year-old children and their parents. Children in families that expressed high levels of negative affect and low levels of positive affect reported greater self-blame for conflict, but parents' expressiveness did not predict children's threat appraisals. Positive and negative expressiveness moderated the association between exposure to parental conflict and children's internalizing and externalizing problems. These data suggest that the broader family context can shape the meaning of conflict to children and increase understanding of the conditions under which parental discord leads to child maladjustment.
Journal of Marriage and Family, 2010
Although triangulation into parental conflict is a risk factor for child and adolescent maladjustment, little is known about how triangulation affects adolescents' functioning or the factors that lead children to be drawn into parental disagreements. This prospective study examined the relations between triangulation, appraisals of conflict, and parent-child relations in a sample of 171 adolescents, ages 14 to 19 years, at 2 time points. Cross-lagged path analyses revealed that youths who experienced greater threat in response to conflict reported increases in triangulation over time, and triangulation was associated with increased self-blame and diminished parent-adolescent relations. This study highlights links between intrapersonal, dyadic, and triadic processes and suggests a mechanism by which interparental discord spills over into parent-adolescent relations.
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 Psychology, 2008
This study examined how children's insecure internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships served as explanatory mechanisms in multiple pathways linking interparental conflict and parent emotional unavailability with the emotional and classroom engagement difficulties the children had in their adjustment to school. With their parents, 229 kindergarten children (127 girls and 102 boys, mean age ϭ 6.0 years, SD ϭ .50, at Wave 1) participated in this multimethod, 3-year longitudinal investigation. Findings revealed that children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship were a significant intervening mechanism in associations between observational ratings of interparental conflict and child and teacher reports on children's emotional and classroom difficulties in school over a 2-year period. Moreover, increased parental emotional unavailability accompanying high levels of interparental conflict was associated with children's insecure representations of the parent-child relationship and children's difficulties in classroom engagement at school entry. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the intrinsic processes that contribute to difficulties with stage-salient tasks for children who are experiencing interparental discord.
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 Child and Family Studies, 2015
The present study tested the effects of interparental conflict on adolescents' psychological adjustment as mediated by cognitive (threat, self-blame, and triangulation) and contextual (maternal and paternal rejection) factors. The sample for this study consisted of 524 high school students (48 % boys and 52 % girls) ranging in age from 11 through 18 years (M = 13.28 years, SD = 1.14). The sample was selected from 19 schools of 3 major cities in Bangladesh. Data were collected using a package of selfreport measures that include: (1) the Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale; (2 and 3) the Child version (short form) of the Parental Acceptance and Rejection Questionnaire for Mothers and for Fathers; (4) the Child version of the Personality Assessment Questionnaire; and (5), the Personal Information Form for demographic information. Results of Bootstrapping Multiple Mediation Analysis showed that both cognitive and contextual factors mediated the effects interparental conflict on adolescents' psychological maladjustment.