Cognitive and behavioral predictors of communication in clinic-referred and nonclinical mother-adolescent dyads

This study examines the relation between mothers' and adolescents' perceptions of one another's behavior and their actual communication behavior during a problem-solving task. Forty mother-adolescent dyads completed self-report and observational measures of conflict and negative beliefs regarding the other. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that adolescents' negative beliefs about their mothers significantly contributed unique variance in predicting adolescent negative communication, beyond the effects of maternal communication behavior. Thus, treatment of parent-adolescent conflict should address adolescents' and parents' perceptions of one another, as well as their problem-solving behavior.