Family hostility and children's cognitive processes

This study examined cognitive processes of children exposed to two types of family hostility: parents' interpartner aggression and/or maternal child abuse potential. Forty-nine mother-child dyads from a community sample participated. Mothers completed the Domestic Conflict Inventory and the Child Abuse Potential Inventory, while children completed cognitive tasks before and after listening to audiotaped vignettes of marital conflict. Study findings revealed that, following presentation of conflict vignettes, children exposed to high versus low levels of family hostility demonstrated fewer intrusion errors on the verbal learning task and showed improved performance on the verbal attention task, yet also performed more poorly on a measure of short delay verbal recall. Discussion addresses the ways in which specific types of cognitive processes are differentially affected by exposure to family hostility.