ORCID
0000-0001-9009-4028
Date of Award
2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Emily Coderre
Abstract
This study examined whether children with high negative affectivity, high surgency, or low effortful control temperament showed differential susceptibility to varying degrees of interparental conflict. This project additionally examined whether the observed differential susceptibility was domain-specific or domain-general. One hundred and eighteen families with children ages from 9 to 11 participated in the study. Mothers filled out questionnaires asking about their child’s temperament, emotional and behavioral functioning, social skills, and academic performance. Mothers and fathers also took part in a discussion involving a difficult topic in their relationship, and their conflict behaviors were later coded. Results of the study revealed that high negative affectivity and low effortful control interacted with interparental conflict to predict child internalizing problems; however, these findings were not replicated in the sensitivity analyses. High surgency interacted with interparental conflict such that for children with most levels of surgency, interparental conflict was not associated with child social problems. However, for children with very high levels of surgency, increasing levels of destructive conflict related to more social problems. These findings did not support differential susceptibility. Consequently, the question of domain-specificity versus domain-generality could not be answered. The implications and applications of these findings included considering using a different temperament profile to better represent the differential susceptibility phenotype and implementing parenting strategies to buffer children with high surgency against social problems when they are exposed to destructive interparental conflict.
Language
en
Number of Pages
77 p.
Recommended Citation
Nguyen, Phuong, "Examining Temperament Traits As Markers Of Children’s Differential Susceptibility To Interparental Conflict" (2025). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 2014.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/2014
