Preschool children's and adult's resolutions of consistent and discrepant messages

Abstract

Research on discrepant messages reveals that elementary school age children, still in the concrete operational stage of development, resolve such messages according to verbal statements while adults react to nonverbal cues. In this study seventy‐five preschool children and 168 adults examined still photographs and accompanying audio tapes of a mother delivering consistent and discrepant messages to a preschool child. Both groups correctly determined the affect of the mother's consistent messages. However, both children and adults responded uncharacteristically to the discrepant messages. Suggestions are made as to the psycho‐social reasons for this given the mother‐child stimulus.

Key concepts:

• Discrepant messages
• consistent messages
• nonverbal communication
• children
• adults
• double bind
• mother
• child chi‐square