Mothers' and fathers' communication with their preschool-aged children in experimental sessions

Abstract

The present study examines the communication of parents and their four-year-old child with a sample of 48 Finnish families. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of parental education, the sex of parent and child, the presence and absence of another parent, the activity undertaken by the participants and the familiarity of the context (the first vs the second stage of the study, home vs laboratory). The families were divided into equal groups of lower and higher parental education. The experiments were carried out in two stages: the first in the laboratory setting and the second in the laboratory setting or at home. The videotaped situations consisted of different cooperative tasks. Measures of communication were based on sequential data: Basic social skills of interaction (initiatives, acknowledgements, nonverbal reactions) and exchanges in communication (question-, demand-, suggestion- and statement exchanges). The results indicated that parental education and parent's sex are not of central importance in parent-child communication. The purpose of interaction and the type of the task had the clearest influence on the basic social skills of interaction and the exchanges of communication. In addition, the task appeared to exert differential effects on the communication of different parent-child groups.