The Role of Parent-Child Interaction and Sensory Processing Pattern in Predicting Children's Internalizing and Externalizing Problems

The aim of this study was to determine the role of parent-child interaction and sensory processing pattern in predicting children's internalizing and externalizing problems.
Using a correlational design, 120 elementary-school students aging 11 and 12 years (67 male and 53 female) were selected from 9 schools of Districts 1, 9, and 18 of Tehran, Iran, through cluster sampling. Then, 69 children with internalizing and externalizing problems were identified by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and divided into two internalizing (n=20) and externalizing (20 people) groups in the final analysis. Next, the Parent-Child Interaction Questionnaire and sensory processing profile were completed. Discriminant function was used to analyze the data.
The results of discriminantion analysis showed that sensory-seeking had the strongest relationship with this function and distinguished the externalizing group from the internalizing one. However, the distinguishing power of the other three variables (sensory sensitivity, sensory avoidance, and conflict in parent-child relationship, respectively) was weaker. In other words, sensory-seeking was the dominant style of sensory processing in children with externalizing problems, while sensory sensitivity and sensory avoidance were the dominant styles of sensory processing in children with internalizing problems, respectively. Moreover, children with externalizing problems had more conflicts in relationships with their parents.
Treatment must focus on sensory processing pattern for children with behavioral-emotional problems and training parents about such individual differences while enhancing positive interactions and providing conflict resolution training to parents in order to reduce children's behavioral-emotional pro