Authors:
Farrant BM, Maybery MT, Fletcher J
Authors notes:
Child Development Research. 2013:68428
Keywords:
Conduct problems, maternal attachment status, emotion talk, emotion understanding, parent involvement
Abstract:
Conduct problems that emerge in childhood often persist into adolescence and are associated with a range of negative outcomes.
It is therefore important to identify the factors that predict conduct problems in early childhood.
The present study investigated the relations among maternal attachment status, mother-child emotion talk, child emotion understanding, and conduct problems in a sample of 92 typically developing children.
The results support a model in which maternal attachment status predicts the level of appropriate/responsive mother-child emotion talk, which predicts child emotion understanding, which in turn negatively predicts child conduct problems.
These findings further underline the developmental role of mother-child emotion talk as well as the importance of involving parents in programs designed to increase children's emotion understanding and/or decrease the incidence of conduct problems.