Psychological Development and Education ›› 2015, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (4): 459-466.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2015.04.10

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Relation between Parental Alexithymia and Children's Behavioral Problems: Mediating Effects of Parents' Mood

LIANG Zongbao, YANG Xueli, ZHANG Guangzhen, JIANG Ning, DENG Huihua, YE Ming   

  1. Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science, Institute of Child Development and Education, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
  • Online:2015-07-15 Published:2015-07-15

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Abstract: 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analysis showed that: (1) Fathers' difficulty of feeling describing was significant associated with children's anxious-withdrawn behaviors, and fathers' happy mood was completely mediated between their difficulty of feeling describing and children's anxious-withdrawn behaviors.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who take a higher risk of alexithymia would exhibit lower happy mood, which then result in children's more anxious-withdrawn behavior.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.

Key words: alexithymia, mood, behavioral problems, preschoolers

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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