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Preschoolers' responses to ongoing interadult conflict: The role of prior exposure to resolved versus unresolved arguments

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Abstract

Children's past experiences with interadult conflict are likely to influence their responses to ongoing arguments. Preschoolers' (4- to 5-year-olds) responses to interadult conflict were examined as a function of experimentally manipulated histories of exposure to resolved and unresolved arguments. Children were presented with two live arguments that were either resolved or unresolved, then they were presented with a third argument that was interrupted in progress (i.e., unresolved), and they were interviewed next. Children's overt-behavioral responses were videotaped and coded for distress level. The results support the notion that past experiences with conflict resolution ameliorate children's distress responses to ongoing arguments. In comparison to children previously exposed to unresolvedconflict, those exposed to a history of resolveddisputes were morelikely to (a) exhibit lowered behavioral distress, (b) predict a lower likelihood of a conflictual outcome for the couple's argument, (c) report less negative perceptions of the arguing adults, and were lesslikely to (d) endorse intervention in conflict through attempts to stop the disputes; (c) and (d) pertained only to girls.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA

    Mona El-Sheikh & Stephanie Reiter

  2. Department of Psychology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA

    E. Mark Cummings

  3. Department of Psychology, Auburn University, 36849-5214, Auburn, Alabama

    Mona El-Sheikh

Authors
  1. Mona El-Sheikh
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  2. E. Mark Cummings
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  3. Stephanie Reiter
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Additional information

This research was supported in part by a Research Grant-in-Aid Award from Auburn University to the first author. We wish to thank the families for contributing their time and effort to this project and Jennifer Gibson and Linda Nicolotti for coding the overt-behavioral data.

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El-Sheikh, M., Cummings, E.M. & Reiter, S. Preschoolers' responses to ongoing interadult conflict: The role of prior exposure to resolved versus unresolved arguments. J Abnorm Child Psychol 24, 665–679 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01670106

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01670106

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