Article1971

Verbal-nonverbal conflict in parental messages to normal and disturbed children.

Daphne E. Bugental · Leonore R. Love · Jacques W. Kaswan · Carol April

88 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Abnormal Psychology

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Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development Attachment and Relationship Dynamics Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics

Abstract

An analysis was made of videotaped parent-child communication within 20 families containing a "disturbed " child (referred by schools for chronic behavior or emo-tional problems) and 10 "normal " control families. Parental messages were judged for evaluative content in verbal (typescript of message), vocal (tone of voice), and visual (facial expressions, gestures, etc.) channels. Significant!; ' more (p =.05) disturbed mothers (59%) produced messages containing evaluative conflict be-tween channels than did normal mothers (10%); no difference was found between normal and disturbed fathers, The sons of mothers producing conflicting messages were found to be higher on school aggressiveness than the sons of "noncon dieting" mothers (p =.05). This study is concerned with the presence of conflict between communication channels in parental messages to normal and disturbed children. Considerable theoretical speculation and research has focused on the relationship between conflicting parental communication and psychopathology in children. Most of such research has been directed toward a test of the double-bind hypothesis with respect to schizo-phrenia (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weak-land, 1956; Weakland, 1961), but increasingly there has been an interest in communication conflict as related to more general disturbances (e.g., Beakel & Mehrabian, 1969). The double-bind hypothesis has received little empirical support (Schuham, 1967), and the presence of conflict in parental messages to disturbed children still rests heavily on anecdotal evidence. The interpretation of noncongruent and con-flicting messages has revealed developmental differences in responses to throe communication

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References

1962Statistical principles in experimental design.1965Review of Child Development Research 2007Toward a theory of schizophrenia 2007Social Class and Mental Illness: A Community Study 1967Decoding of inconsistent communications.1970Perception of contradictory meanings conveyed by verbal and nonverbal channels.1970Child versus adult perception of evaluative messages in verbal, vocal, and visual channels.

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1989Familial environment associated with Type A behaviors and psychophysiological responses to stress in children.1971Perfidious feminine faces.1996Pathways among marital functioning, parental behaviors, and child behavior problems in school-age boys 2001Facial Expressions During Marital Conflict 1982Developing Strategies for Decoding “Leaky” Messages: On Learning How and When to Decode Discrepant and Consistent Social Communications 1979The impact of multichannel message inconsistency on verbal and nonverbal decoding behaviors

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