Comparing styles of parent-child conversation: The influence on children's conduct problems and emotion knowledge

This preliminary study conducted across Canberra and Wellington was the first to compare the effectiveness of two styles of maternal-reminiscing as an adjunct to Parent Management Training (PMT) for mothers of children ranging from four to eight-years-old (M = 63.1, SD = 14.4 months) with conduct problems. This was a manualised six session intervention. Parents in both conditions received PMT. Parents were asked to reminisce with their child about shared events using their allocated style of maternal reminiscing. The W-D-E condition drew on research by Van Bergen, Salmon, Dadds, and Allen (2009) which encouraged mothers to use 'wh' questions and detailed descriptive information about the even. The R-U-S style extended on the research by Ensor and Hughes (2008) in which mothers were encouraged to be responsive and allow their child to lead the conversation. Both conditions placed a direct focus on discussing emotion, including labels, behaviours, causes and consequences of emotion. As expected, both condition showed a significant decrease in conduct problem severity and a significant increase in aspects of children‟s emotion knowledge between pre- and immediately post-intervention. However, there were no significant differences between conditions with respect to children‟s conduct problems severity and emotion knowledge. Given that the literature supports a link between deficits in emotion knowledge and children‟s conduct problems, and that parental discussion of emotion supports children‟s developing socioemotional development, the current preliminary study extends on the work by Salmon, Dadds, Allen, and Hawes (2009) in which efforts are being made to integrate emotion components with PMT.