Document Type

Article

Language

eng

Publication Date

12-2008

Publisher

American Psychological Association

Source Publication

Journal of Family Psychology

Source ISSN

0893-3200

Original Item ID

DOI: 10.1037/a0013809

Abstract

Emotional, cognitive, and family systems processes have been identified as mediators of the association between interparental conflict and children's adjustment. However, little is known about how they function in relation to one another because they have not all been assessed in the same study. This investigation examined the relations among children's exposure to parental conflict, their appraisals of threat and blame, their emotional reaction, and triangulation into parental disagreements. One hundred fifty ethnically diverse 8- to 12-year-old children and both of their parents participated in the study. Comparisons of 3 models proposing different relations among these processes indicated that they function as parallel and independent mediators of children's adjustment. Specifically, children's self-blaming attributions and emotional distress were uniquely associated with both internalizing and externalizing problems, whereas perceived threat uniquely predicted internalizing problems and triangulation uniquely predicted externalizing problems.

Comments

Accepted version. Journal of Family Psychology, Vol. 22, No. 6 (December 2008): 843-854. DOI. © 2008 American Psychological Association. Used with permission.

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