CHILD COMPLIANCE AS A FUNCTION OF IMPERATIVE VERSUS INTERROGATIVE COMMANDS

KENNETH FRED REED, Purdue University

Abstract

Although a considerable body of research has accumulated dealing with child compliance, few studies have addressed antecedents of compliance such as parental command behavior. The fact that observational studies which have compared clinic and nonclinic families have found that command behaviors account for many of the significant differences between these groups indicates that this variable may have an important impact on compliance. Investigators have identified many different types of commands, but little is known currently about the effects of these commands on compliance due to methodological problems in previous research. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of imperative and interrogative commands on child compliance in a clinic analogue setting using nonclinic mother-child dyads. These two types of commands were selected because of inconsistent results concerning their effects on compliance in previous research and because several parent training programs assume that imperative commands are more effective in eliciting compliance than interrogative commands. An experimental design was employed to control for the methodological problems present in previous research. The results of this study found no evidence to suggest that compliance varies significantly as a function of imperative and interrogative commands for either children who received only one type of command or for children who received both types of commands. These results question the assumption of current parent training programs. Compliance was found to vary to a large extent as a function of the content of the commands. The implications of these results were discussed and recommendations for future research were addressed.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Psychotherapy

COinS