Date of Award
2005
Document Type
Thesis
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science Honours
School
School of Psychology
Faculty
Faculty of Community Services, Education and Social Sciences
First Supervisor
Kevin Runions
Abstract
In an attempt to fill a gap in the social information processing literature, the present study investigated whether mother-child communication is related to children's attribution tendencies in ambiguous, negative social situations. Measures of mothers' social framing, frequency of mother-child conversations about peers, and children's hostile attributions of intent were scored for 45 mother-child dyads. The results showed that mothers' social framing was a key predictor of preschool children's attribution tendencies. However, frequency of mother-child conversations about peers was not a significant predictor of preschool children's attribution tendencies. Overall, the results of this study provide support for mothers' social framing as a specific socialization mechanism that is associated with children's attribution tendencies. However, due to the sample limitations and correlational design, these results are preliminary. Therefore, the present results offer preliminary findings for future research endeavors, and demonstrate the importance of future research investigating the role of content of mother-child communication in children's attribution tendencies with larger and more diverse samples so that these results can have implications for developing effective intervention and prevention programs for children's social maladjustment.
Recommended Citation
Lemme, L. (2005). Mothers' social framing, frequency of mother-child conversations about peers, and preschool aged children's attribution tendencies. Edith Cowan University. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses_hons/1041