Parent-Child Interaction Therapy's Influence on Parental Behavior and Child Compliance in a Child-Welfare Involved Randomized Clinical Trial.

Abstract

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) improves parenting practices in families at risk of abuse or neglect, yet parental verbalizations which influence child compliance remain understudied. This study examines how specific parenting verbalizations influence command-compliance interactions using a Clean-Up task from the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System (DPICs) in a randomized control trial using at-risk families. Child compliance is improved with direct commands, positive verbalizations, and PCIT dosage, but frequent commands decrease it. Negative verbalizations have a moderated relationship: compliance probability increases with time elapsed since the last negative verbalization. Results uncover parental behaviors that increase compliance and how PCIT influences these.