父母述情困难与儿童行为问题:父母心境的中介作用
Relation between Parental Alexithymia and Children's Behavioral Problems: Mediating Effects of Parents' Mood

采用整群抽样法选取438名学前儿童及其家长为被试, 通过量表考察父母述情困难、心境与儿童问题行为之间的关系。结果发现:(1)父亲述情困难与儿童焦虑害羞行为显著正相关, 父亲情绪愉悦在其述情困难与儿童焦虑害羞行为之间具有完全中介作用;(2)母亲述情困难与儿童愤怒攻击、焦虑害羞行为显著正相关, 同时母亲的情绪波动在其述情困难与儿童愤怒攻击行为之间起着部分中介作用。研究结果说明述情困难风险较高的父亲, 其情绪愉悦水平也相对较低, 进而导致儿童表现出更多焦虑害羞行为;述情困难风险较高的母亲, 一方面会直接导致儿童表现出较多愤怒攻击与焦虑害羞行为, 另一方面又会通过其情绪波动增加儿童出现愤怒攻击行为的风险。
Emotion discourse among family members will influence their emotions and behaviors with each other. Cognitive and describing ability of self-feeling for parents not only affect their mental health, but also play an important role in the development of children's social behaviors. This study aimed to investigate the relations among parental alexithymia, mood and childhood behavioral problems. 438 preschoolers and their parents participated in this study. The 20-item Toronto alexithymia scale and mood scale were used to measure parents' alexithymia and mood, respectively. Mothers rated children's behavioral problems on the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation Scale. The results of structural equation model analysis showed that: (1) Fathers' difficulty of feeling describing was significant associated with children's anxious-withdrawn behaviors, and fathers' happy mood was completely mediated between their difficulty of feeling describing and children's anxious-withdrawn behaviors. (2) Mothers' difficulty of feeling describing was positively associated with children's conduct problems; mothers' frequency of mood change partly mediated the relation between their alexithymia and children's angry-aggression behaviors. The results indicated that fathers who take a higher risk of alexithymia would exhibit lower happy mood, which then result in children's more anxious-withdrawn behavior. Compared with fathers, if mothers experienced higher risk of alexithymia and fluctuated mood, their children may show more conduct problems. Thus, parental alexithymia has great implications for children's conduct problems because it will result in parents' lower happy mood and higher fluctuated mood. These findings highlight the importance of parental emotion discourse in children development in China.