Isolating causal effects through experimental changes in parent-child interaction

Abstract

A distinction is made between functional and intentional control in parent-child interaction. These concepts are drawn, respectively, from operant and cognitive models of interaction process. Experimental evidence is presented that cognitive factors such as expectations or hypotheses indeed affect the relations between parents and their own children. This necessitates a further distinction between long-term and short-term causal effects: Since changes in parents' expectations for their children may lag behind actual changes in children's behavior, short-term effects inferred from observations of ongoing interactions may not reflect the long-term dynamics of the relationship.