Emotional Flooding and Relational Schemas in Families with Early Childhood Conduct Problems

Abstract

It is now well established that dysfunctional parenting is associated with the development and maintenance of conduct problems, beginning in early childhood. However, the cognitive and affective processes that contribute to dysfunctional parenting in early childhood remain poorly understood. Two constructs that appear to play important roles in this regard are emotional flooding and relational schemas. Emotional flooding is the tendency to experience another’s negative emotion as unpredictable, overwhelming, and disorganising. Relational schemas refer to cognitive structures and affective attitudes representing patterns of interpersonal relatedness. One of the most rigorous methods available for assessing these schemas is the independent coding of parent speech using the Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS). Although both emotional flooding and negative relational schemas have been associated with conduct problems, little is known about how these processes relate to one another, or may combine to jointly shape parenting problems. The broad aim of the research presented in this thesis was to examine emotional flooding and relational schemas as cognitive-affective correlates of negative parenting in families at risk for early childhood conduct problems. First, given growing interest in the FMSS as a measure of relational schemas and other parent-child processes, a systematic review was conducted to evaluate measurement properties of the FMSS in terms of its associations with observational indices of parent-child interactions. This review identified 25 studies (involving a total of N = 2945 child participants), 20 of which reported significant associations between the FMSS and observed parent-child interaction. Second, an empirical study was conducted to test for associations between emotional flooding, relational schemas, and parenting practices. Data from parental self-reports and independent coding were collected in samples of typically-developing children (n = 73) and those with clinic-referred conduct problems (n = 85). As predicted, parental flooding and relational schemas were found to be significantly related to one another. Furthermore, both flooding and negative relational schemas were found to occur at significantly higher levels among parents of children with clinic-referred conduct problems compared to those of typically-developing children. In multivariate analyses, emotional flooding was found to predict some self-reported and observed parenting practices independently of parents’ global negative affective state (e.g., depression, stress , and anxiety), however relational schemas was not. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to family-based models of early childhood conduct problems and parenting interventions for conduct problems in this period.