درک فرایندهای عاطفی کودکان و استراتژی های رفتاری در زمینه تعارضات زناشویی

Marital conflict is a distressing context in which children must regulate their emotion and behavior; however, the associations between the multidimensionality of conflict and children’s regulatory processes need to be examined. The current study examined differences in children’s (N = 207, mean age = 8.02 years) emotions (mad, sad, scared, and happy) and behavioral strategies to regulate conflict exposure during resolved, unresolved, escalating, and child-rearing marital conflict vignettes. Children’s cortisol levels were assessed in relation to child-rearing and resolved conflict vignettes. Anger and sadness were associated with escalating and child-rearing conflicts, fearfulness was related to escalating and unresolved conflicts, and happiness was associated with resolution. Anger was associated with children’s strategies to stop conflict, whereas sadness was associated with monitoring and avoidant strategies. Cortisol recovery moderated the link between fearfulness and behavioral regulation. These results highlight the importance of children’s emotions and regulatory processes in understanding the impact of marital conflict.

The development of emotion regulation skills is an important developmental task for children (Thompson, 1994). The ability to successfully regulate emotional experiences has been linked to children’s social competence and psychopathology (Zeman, Cassano, Perry-Parrish, & Stegall, 2006). Emotion regulation is a multifaceted system of component processes that includes emotional, behavioral, and biological components (Cicchetti et al., 1991 and Thompson et al., 2008). As Thompson and colleagues have highlighted, there is much need for understanding the interactive nature of the multiple regulatory processes involved in emotion regulation, including emotional, physiological, and behavioral components, as well as the context in which they occur. Moving beyond examining children’s general emotional tendencies, the current study examined the role of children’s emotional responses, physiological arousal, and behavioral regulation strategies in the context of interparental conflict. Destructive interparental conflict provides a distressing context for children, eliciting the experience of negative emotion and subsequent regulation of children’s exposure to the conflict. Although marital conflict proves to be distressing for children, it is a normative recurrent stressor occurring on a regular basis in families, providing a specific context in which children are repeatedly engaged in regulating their emotional experiences. Moreover, the impact of marital conflict on children’s adjustment is partly related through associations with children’s emotional experience and regulatory abilities in response to conflict.