A Study Of Parent-adolescent Communication On Academic-related Topics In Junior Middle School Students

Currently researchers all over the world pay much attention to parent-adolescent communication, which makes it a hot area of research. And great many achievements have been reached since the recently 20 years. Based on the systematic review of relevant literatures, this research focused on junior middle school students' parent-adolescent communication of academic-related topics which could easily trigger off parent-adolescent conflicts. The research consisted of two parts.219 students in grade six and grade eight completed questionnaires on frequencies of their communication and conflicts with parents on academic related topics, their conflicts resolution strategies, and the overall quality of parent-adolescent communication in study 1. And meanwhile, the relationship between these three indexes mentioned above and the overall quality of parent-adolescent communication is also explored. The results were as follows:(1) While grade difference was not found in frequencies of their conflicts with parent on academic related topics, gender difference in it was significant. No grade difference or gender distinction has been found in frequencies of their communication with parent on academic related topics and conflicts resolution strategies. Overall, junior school students used avoidance strategy most frequently, and the least was the strategy of intervention by others.(2) There were great gender differences in the overall quality of parent-adolescent communication, communication motivation dimension, communication ability dimension and factors in the two dimensions. Generally, girls got much higher scores than boys. Obvious grade difference was also perceived in easy sense factor of communication motivation dimension and active listening factor of communication ability dimension. Students in grade six got much higher scores than those in grade eight.(3) Frequency of parent-adolescent communication on academic-related topics and the overall quality of parent-adolescent communication was significantly and positively correlated. Negotiation strategy and avoidance strategy were also closely related to the quality of parent-adolescent communication. Frequency of parent-adolescent communication on academic-related topics and enforcement strategy were negatively related to the quality of parent-adolescent communication.65 grade six students who ranked top or bottom 25% in the parent-adolescent communication quality test were invited to participated in study 2. Based on the integrated model of emotion processes and cognition in social information processing, we developed hypothesis vignettes concerned parent-adolescent communication on academic-related topics to explore group differences on emotion and behavior intent attribution, emotion regulation strategy, response generation and response evaluation. Meanwhile, we used stepwise regression to explore the effects of the above variables on the overall quality of parent-adolescent communication. Main achievements were as follows:(1) There were significant differences between two groups on various steps of social information processing and emotion process. Specifically, the high score group differed widely from the low score group in other's understanding and calm emotion attribution, other's inquiry and listening behavior prediction, own guilty and blame emotion awareness, emotion regulation strategy of solutions seeking, adaptive emotion regulation strategy, act possibility of calm communication, act possibility of quarrel and conflict, appropriateness of calm communication, appropriateness of quarrel and conflict and response enactment.(2) Stepwise regression revealed that the overall quality of parent-adolescent communication can be positively predicted by act possibility of calm communication, adaptive emotion regulation and appropriateness of calm communication, while behavior attribution of parents' criticize and blame place negative predication on the overall quality of parent-adolescent communication.