Family communication patterns, sex of subject, and communication competence

Family Communication Patterns and Conflict Styles in Chinese Parent-Child Relationships

“…More recently, the two-dimensional model is often used in conjunction with the four-fold typology to better investigate the effect of family communication patterns on children's socialization across contexts, such as conflict management (Dumlao & Botta, 2000;Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 1997;2002b), communication competence (Koesten, 2004), and college adjustment (Orrego & Rodriguez, 2001).…”

Not Just Preaching to the Choir: Communication Scholarship Does Make a Difference

“…These research studies influence practice by documenting the nature of effective communication and showing its relationship to desired outcomes (Koesten, 2004;Le Poire, Hallett, & Erlandson, 2000;Miller-Day & Day, 2002;Rueter & Koerner, 2008;Segrin & Flora, 2000;Segrin, Hanzal, Donnerstein, Taylor, & Domschke, 2007). Consider the work of Segrin and colleagues (Segrin, 2000(Segrin, , 2001Segrin & Flora, 2000;Segrin, Hanzal, et al, 2007), which has provided a number of insights about the relationship between social skills and psychological well-being.…”

“…The theory designates four types of families based on their endorsement of behaviors associated with the two dimensions: Consensual, high endorsement of both dimensions; Pluralistic, high conversation/low conformity; Protective, low conversation/high conformity; and Laissez-faire, low on both dimensions. Research by Koesten (2004) has demonstrated a positive relationship between conversation orientation within a family and five dimensions of interpersonal communication competence (i.e., self-disclosure, managing conflict, initiating conversations, providing emotional support, and making a negative assertion), but a negative relationship between conformity orientation and competence in providing emotional support and managing conflict. Further, Rueter and Koerner (2008) have shown that these orientations are particularly important in determining the psychological adjustment of adolescents in a complex family structure.…”

Communicative Responses to the Painful Self-Disclosures of Familial and Non-Familial Older Adults

“…Families high in conversation orientation freely discuss diverse topics (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 1997), and children who grow up in such families score higher on measures of communication competence such as the ability to self-disclose and offer emotional support (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 1997;Koesten, 2004). In this vein, Fowler and Soliz (2010) learned that grandchildren from families with high levels of conversation-orientation found grandparents' PSD less troubling, perhaps because they were used to discussing difficult experiences or negative emotions.…”

“…Consequently, young adults raised in such families are less apt to try to disengage from interactions featuring PSD and likely focusing more on responding to PSD in a prosocial manner; e.g., by asking follow-up questions or offering assessments of these disclosures. Further, communicative responsiveness mediates the relationship between conversation-orientation and next moves suggesting that conversation-orientation helps develop emotional intelligence (Keaten & Kelley, 2008) and communicative competencies such as the ability to offer social support (Koesten, 2004)-both of which are key elements of communicative responsiveness.…”