Patterns of adult-child communication in a problem-solving task

Abstract

The present study was aimed at identifying patterns of communication. Analysis was focused on the problem-solving task, which consisted of model pictures and wooden blocks. Parent-child dyads were asked to build according to given model. Mothers and fathers were considered separately. The patterns of communication were described as follows: In Group 1 the parents tried to stimulate the child to find solutions and to correct mistakes by himself (him will be used throughout the text to refer in general to a person of either sex) by asking the child questions and by giving different cues, in Group 2 the task was more guided by the adult, although mother or father performed flexibly taking into account the abilities of the child, in Group 3 the guidance was more stiff and the cues were given more directly and concretely, in Group 4 the adult was observed to build much him/herself, reaching the goal seemed to be more important than working in cooperation with the child. Group 5 included those parent-child dyads, which did not build according to the given model. The distributions of mother-child and father-child dyads to Groups of patterns were approximately similar. The relationships between the patterns of communication and parental education and the sex of the child were examined, too. The results revealed that all the mother-child dyads in Group 1 belonged to the higher education group. The same trend was found for father-child dyads, but the finding was not statistically significant. Secondly, comparisons were made between parent-child groups of patterns in particular aspects of child communication. The results indicated no differences between groups of patterns on any measures of child communication.