L. Komalova
ADOLESCENT’S COPING-STRATEGIES VERBALIZATION IN RESPOND TO PARENT’S DESTRUCTIVE SPEECH BEHAVIOR (EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH)2
Abstract. The paper describes a research aiming at correlating the adolescent’s speech behavior in response to the parent’s destructive speech behavior with the description of coping-strategies conceptualized in the psychological literature. The research design includes an experimental procedure similar to a projective test, which is preceded by a lexico-semantic analysis of coping-strategies’ descriptors. The research involved 53 people (29 females and 24 males) aged 18-37, students of humanitarian universities and / or working in humanitarian specialties. The subjects were asked to imagine themselves in the social role of a child in five model situations and to record in writing their verbal reaction (in the form of direct speech) in response to the verbal behavior of the parent / parents in each of the proposed situations. As a result of the analysis of the child’s speech behavior, it was revealed that the variables “the situation of interaction between the child and the parent” and “the biological age of the child” influence the child’s preferences when verbalizing coping-strategies, while the variable “the biological sex of the child” affects the choice of coping-strategies only in combination with other variables. In response to the parent’s destructive verbal behavior in model situations, the child’s verbal behavior is dominated by the verbalization of such coping-strategies as “search for social support”, “problem solving planning”, “confrontation” and “acceptance of responsibility”. It was revealed that in situations with greater autonomy of the child, the verbalization of the coping-strategy “problem solving planning” is more pronounced, in situations with less autonomy of the child, the verbalization of the coping-strategy “confrontation” is more pronounced.
Keywords: coping-strategies, coping behavior, speech behavior, parent-child relationship, biological sex.