The Association between Early Adolescent Boys' Cognitive Development, Father Attitudes and Nonverbal Behavior

Abstract

Based on Piaget's equilibration theory, father dogmatism and empathy was hypothesized to influence sons' cognitive development through non-verbal behavior in father-son interactions. Subjects were 52 pairs of fathers and their sons drawn from first-year high school students of bi-parental families. Fathers' dogmatism and empathy was assessed by questionnaire, sons' cognitive development with Piaget's permutation task using the clinical procedure, and fathers' nonverbal behavior by videotaping father-son interactions while they worked on a computer terminal. A factor analysis of fathers' nonverbal behavior revealed two factors accounting for 59.3% of the variance. One factor is mainly loaded with fathers' visual behavior and body orientation toward their sons while keeping at a distance from them. The other factor is mainly loaded with fathers' smiling behavior. No relationship was found between fathers' dogmatism, empathy and sons' cognitive development, but the nonverbal factor "father smiles" was associated with both sons' cognitive development and fathers' dogmatism. A multiple regressions analysis revealed that together these traits account for 24% of the variance in the nonverbal factor "father smiles." This result is interpreted as not only showing once more children's effects on parents' behavior, but also as evidence that by using both some of the child's and some of the parents characteristics we can account for more of the variance in the parent's behavior with his child than if either are considered independently.