A new study published recently in the Journal of Family Psychology suggests that the arguments you and your spouse have in front of the kids may actually be affecting how well kids perceive adult emotion. The research found that children who see their parents fight a lot are often much more aware of minute differences in people’s emotions. These kids are typically more aware of feelings than children who don’t often see their mom and dad argue.
Researchers looked at entire households and split the participants into either high-conflict or low-conflict groups based on questionnaires completed by the mothers in the study. They then analyzed the brain activity of the children when they were looking at photos of adults with happy, angry or neutral expressions.
The kids from high-conflict homes didn’t necessarily identify different expressions, but an EEG test, which monitored their brain waves while they scanned the pictures, showed they had a higher level of brain activity than kids from low-conflict families. Since the test looks at how the brain focuses on stimuli and gives them meaning, researchers concluded that the kids with parents who argued more often were likely more vigilant and observant processors of adults’ emotions (or adult emotion) — even when those in the photos had happy expressions on their faces.
Psychologists are still trying to figure out whether this higher level of emotional awareness has any good or bad effects on kids in high-conflict homes.
Moms participating in the experiment answered a 10-question assessment, self-reporting on how much their kids were exposed to parental conflict. Sample questions included whether the parents displayed violent behavior in front of their children and what percentage of arguments their kids were exposed to.
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