The Effect of Emotion Cognitive Regulation Training on Parent-Child Interaction of the Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

The emergence of psychological damages such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) leads to disturbance of social interaction and familiar interactions of the children and adolescents. Therefore the present study was conducted to determine the effect of emotion cognitive regulation training on parent-child interaction of the children with ODD.

It was a quasi-experimental study with pretest, posttest, control group. The statistical population included ODD students studying at the first course schools in the city of Tehran in academic year 2018-19. The sample includes 30 ODD students who were selected through multi-stage clustered random sampling method and randomly replaced into experimental and control groups (15 in each group). The experimental group received emotion cognitive regulation training during eight ninety-minute sessions. In order to collect information the questionnaires of children and adolescents’ mental health (Gado and Sprafkin, 1994) and parent-child relationship questionnaire (Faben, Mourland Shevil, 1983) were used. ANCOVA test was used in order to analyze the data Using SPSS statistical software version 23.

The results showed that emotion regulation training has significantly influenced parent-child interaction in ODD students (p<0.0001) The mean scores of parent-child interaction with father and mother in the experimental group were 74.42 and 83.14 in the pre-test and 93.59 and 104.42 in the post-test, respectively. However, the mean scores of parent-child interaction with father and mother in the control group were 71.68 and 84.31 in the pre-test and 70.18 and 85.43 in the post-test, respectively.

According to the findings of the present study it can be concluded that emotion regulation training through employing cognitive and emotional techniques can influence parent-child interaction of ODD students. So emotion regulation training can be used as an effective therapy to improve parent-child interaction of ODD students.