COMPETENCE IN CHILDREN AT RISK FOR PSYCHOPATHOLOGY PREDICTED FROM CONFIRMATORY AND DISCONFIRMATORY FAMILY COMMUNICATION

The relationship between confirmation/disconfirmation in parental and family communication and off spring social competence was examined in 59 families in which at least one of the parents had been hospitalized for a functional psychiatric disorder. Communication samples were obt ained using the Consensus Rorschach procedure both with parental coupl es and with parent-child-family units. The communication was analyzed using the Confirmation-Disconfirmation Coding System (CONDIS). The com petence at school of 7-and 10-year-old boys was rated by both peers an d teachers. Competence at home was rated by the parents. The results i ndicated that the more competent the high-risk children were, both at school and at home, the more their family communicated in confirmatory ways and the less they communicated in disconfirmatory ways. Further more, although the parental couple CONDIS score and the family CONDIS score were modestly correlated, each contributed separately to the pre diction of offspring competence. These communication data were not sig nificantly related to parental psychopathology, neither severity of pa rental impairment nor the diagnosis of the patient-parent.