Dimensional Structure of Parent–Child Emotion Dialogues in Families Exposed to Interpersonal Violence: Associations with Internalizing, Externalizing and Trauma Symptoms

Abstract

The way in which parents discuss children’s past emotional events with them is associated with various outcomes in children, such as emotion regulation skills and behavior problems. For children growing up with adverse experiences such as witnessing domestic violence, it is particularly important to understand the link between emotion dialogues and child functioning, because parents’ guidance in dialogues about emotional events may be hampered or suboptimal. Previous studies on parent–child emotion dialogues using the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogues (AEED) measure usually focused on composite scores, failing to take into account the various aspects of parent–child emotion dialogues. Therefore, we examined (a) whether a multidimensional structure in the 16 quality rating scales of the AEED can be found in two samples of trauma-exposed and nonexposed parent–child dyads ( N = 234, child age 4–13 years), (b) whether the identified dimensions predict child internalizing, externalizing and trauma symptoms. Principal components analyses showed multidimensionality in emotion dialogues with two factors that replicated across samples, labeled sensitive guidance & child cooperation and closure/resolution. Regression analyses showed that closure/resolution predicted fewer internalizing symptoms. When dyads ended dialogues about children feeling sad, scared, or angry in a more constructive way, children showed fewer internalizing symptoms. Sensitive guidance & child cooperation predicted less externalizing and trauma symptoms in children. Our study suggests that the degree of positive closure of a dialogue about negative emotions might be a specific aspect of parent–child emotion dialogue related to child outcomes that might have potential clinical relevance.