The Relationship between Children's Reported Exposure to Interparental Conflict and Memory Biases in the Recogniton of Aggressive and Constructive Conflict Words
A total of 70 Latino children between the ages of 7 and 12 years completed measures of exposure to interparental conflict and listened to audio taped simulations of interparental conflict. Children's memory for aggressive and constructive conflict words used during the session was then assessed with a word recognition task. Results indicate that older children who report witnessing high levels of marital conflict made significantly more false positive and fewer false negative memory errors for aggressive words than did all other children. This study provides preliminary support for the theory that children develop marital conflict representations that reflect their socialization experiences with interparental conflict and that guide information processing in the context of novel marital conflict.