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A Measurement and Prospective Study of Co-Rumination in Parent-Adolescent Conversations Several Years After a Devastating Tornado
Abel, Madelaine R
Abel, Madelaine R
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Abstract
Parent-child communication plays an important role in children’s disaster recovery. However, when conversations include co-rumination, defined as extensively rehashing and dwelling on problems with others, there may be both risks and benefits for psychological adjustment. In the current study, 200 adolescents (ages 13 to 17 years; 64% male; 80% African American) and their parents who experienced an EF-4 tornado in April 2011 provided joint recollections about their tornado experiences approximately 5 years post-tornado. Youth were drawn from an ongoing prevention study for aggressive behaviors. The first aim was to determine if the four components of co-rumination (rehashing problems, dwelling on negative affect, mutual encouragement of problem talk, and speculating about problems) could be identified, and reliably measured, in the parent-adolescent tornado conversations. The second aim was to examine the prospective associations between two early youth-level risk factors—youth posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)— measured within the first year after the tornado and co-rumination several years later. Results indicated that the four components of co-rumination could be identified and reliably measured and loaded onto a single latent factor. In addition, youth PTSS was associated with “dwelling on negative affect” only at low levels of resting RSA (an index of physiological dysregulation) and after considering variance associated with the other three co-rumination components. There was no association between youth PTSS and “dwelling on negative affect” when youth were physiologically regulated. PTSS and resting RSA were unrelated to the other three co-rumination components. Overall, results provide preliminary evidence establishing the co-rumination coding scheme in a sample of disaster-exposed parents and adolescents. Results also indicated that PTSS and resting RSA are important youth-level factors that relate to the long-term quality of parent-child talk about their disaster experiences 5 years post exposure.
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Date
2022-08-31
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University of Kansas
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Keywords
Clinical psychology, Co-Rumination, Natural Disasters, Parent-Child Communication, Posttraumatic Stress, Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia