A Study on the Structure of Parents-Child Communications in Late Adolescence : From the Viewpoint of Individuation Model

Abstract

This study examined the structure of communications in late adolescent and their parents relationships, from a point of view of the individuation model which was proposed by Condon, Cooper, and Grotevant (1984). Thirty Japanese families (including undergraduate students and their both parents) participated in Family Interaction Task used to measure family individuation. The first 300 utterances (communication behaviors) of each family were coded into 14 categories. The frequencies of utterances in each category were submitted to ANOVA to assess the differences of communication behaviors among family member. As a result, adolescents expressed utterances indicative of connectedness (acknowledgememt, agrees with/accepts/incorporates other's ideas, requests information/validation, and states other's feeling/mindreads/dictates feeling) much more than their father significantly. In the next step of analysis, the data (11 categories except for 3 categories) were submitted to factor analysis using principal component solution with varimax rotation. This analysis showed the structure consisted of 3 components (permeability, self-expression, and separation).