关键词: 亲子对话, 儿童/父母驱动, 父母教养, 儿童行为, 动态结构方程模型

Abstract: Parent-child communication is an important way for parents to educate their children. Meanwhile, young children are active agents during the conversation and may influence parents. The cumulative effect of daily interactions is thought to make great contributions to children’s developmental outcomes. Most of the previous studies have explored the parent-effect and the child-effect independently or examined parent-child bidirectional relations over developmental time. By now little is known about dynamic associations between parenting behaviors and children's behavioral responses during communication. Children aged 5 and 6 have gained more autonomy and developed a certain ability to self-regulate, it is important to consider dynamic processes in parent-preschooler dyads. The current study using dynamic structural equation modeling, investigated bidirectional associations between within-person fluctuations in parenting behaviors and child behavioral responses during a task of conflict discussion, tried to reveal whether the interaction process is parent-driven or child-driven. The participants in this study included 113 Chinese parent-child dyads (59 boys, Mage = 5.81 years old). During the laboratory visit, parent-child dyads were videotaped in a conflict discussion (i.e., discussing a negative episode in which both parent and child were prone to conflict in daily life). Two independent pairs of trained and reliable coders assessed (a) parents’ supportive and non-supportive behavior and (b) children’s positive and negative behavior during each 15-s epoch, and also coded (c) outcome of the conflict resolution (i.e., compromise, win-loss, or standoff). Results suggested that there was a significant cross-lag effect from children to parent, within-person increases in timet-1 children’s negative behavior predicted subsequent increases in parents’ non-supportive behaviors at timet (β＝0.148, CI＝[0.073, 0.222]).The multiple liner regression showed that only children's positive behaviors significantly predicted the outcome of conflict resolution (β＝0.40, t＝4.10, p＜.001), the higher the level of children's positive behavioral responses, the more constructively conflicts could be resolved. The current study validated the child-driven effect at the micro level and supported the important role of preschool children in parent-child interactions.

Key words: Parent-child communication, Child/parent driven, Parenting, Children's behavior, Dynamic structural equation model