Authors

Nadia Samad

Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Heyman, Richard E | Davila, Joanne | Moyer, Anne | Smith Slep, Amy M | Crowell, Judith.

Date

2014-12-01

Keywords

Clinical psychology | family conflict, hostile attribution bias, interparental conflict, parenting, social competence, social information processing

Department

Department of Clinical Psychology.

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77194

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

Young children's social competence has profound effects on developmental outcomes (Diener & Kim, 2004). It has been well-established that children's home environments (i.e. | parenting, interparental conflict) are related to children's later social competence (O'Connor, Jenkins, Hewitt, DeFries, & Plomin, 2001; Parke et al. | 2001). A structural model was proposed that posited children's social information processing as a mechanism through which interparental conflict and parenting predict children's social competence. To test the proposed model, 397 families with at least one child between the ages of four and eight participated in the present study. The proposed model was analyzed and modified in Amos 20.0. The final structural model outlines pathways whereby parenting significantly predicts children's social competence directly and indirectly, through children's social information processing. Further, interparental conflict significantly indirectly predicts children's social competence, through parenting and children's social information processing. These pathways highlight the possible utility of two types of interventions to improve children's social competence in high conflict homes: (a) parenting interventions aimed at increasing positive parenting behaviors (e.g. | warmth, responsiveness) and (b) interventions with children designed to correct their hostile attribution biases (e.g. | by training them to interpret their peers' intentions more accurately and choose more appropriate behavioral responses). | 53 pages

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