Family hostility and children's cognitive processes

This study examined cognitive processes of children exposed to two types of family hostility: parents' interpartner aggression and/or maternal child a buse potential, Forty-nine mother-child dyads from a community sample parti cipated. Mothers completed the Domestic Conflict Inventory and the Child Ab use Potential Inventory, while children completed cognitive tasks before an d after listening to audiotaped vignettes of marital conflict. Study findin gs revealed that, following, presentation of conflict vignettes, children e xposed to high versus low levels of family hostility demonstrated fewer int rusion errors on the verbal learning task and showed improved performance o n the verbal attention task, yet also performed more poorly on a measure of short delay verbal recall. Discussion addresses the ways in which specific types of cognitive processes are differentially affected by exposure to fa mily hostility.