Abstract: Compliance is a major goal of early socialization in childhood. It is initially imposed and maintained by external demands, such as parental request and directives, but is increasingly mediated by internal factors as children mature. When children transit from infancy to toddlerhood, their abilities develop quickly. They are increasingly gaining independence and ability to assert their own will in social interactions including noncompliant behaviors such as resistance and defiance to adults’ requests. Many researches have found that noncompliance is very common and the rates of between 20% and 40% have been reported in different studies. Some researchers proposed that early noncompliance places children at risk for a chain of events including poor peer relationships, poor academic performance, delinquency, and problems later in life. In our opinion, noncompliance occurs too frequently to be conceptuallized exclusively in terms of childhood dysfunction. In the present study, we attempted to investigate the relationship between noncompliance behavior of 2-year-old children and mother-child interaction. All together 138 2-year-old children and their mothers took part in the research. Mothers and children were invited to visit the university laboratory within three months of each child’s second birthday. During the visit, each toddler-mother dyad entered a room comprising one large chair and one small chair, a low table, and an assortment of attractive toys. One pair of mother-child was participate in the structured lab observation and was videoed each time. In this study, child noncompliance was coded based on mother-child interaction during the clean-up session. The free-play session (10minutes) started immediately after the child and the mother entered the room. The mother sat in the large chair and filled out a questionnaire. The clean-up session (approximately 3 minutes) followed the free-play session. Children were asked by the mother to place the toys into the basket. Child noncompliant responses to the mother’s requests and demands were coded using a timesampling approach. Noncompliance coded in the study included passive noncompliance (e.g., ignoring maternal directives) and direct defiance and rufusal/negotiation (reactions without negative affect, e.g., “I don’t want to,” “I’ll do it later”). At the same time, maternal strategy and response was coded. There was two parts of maternal strategy including maternal verbal component and maternal physical component. The data was coded by two Chinese graduate students in psychology. After statistic analysis, this research has got the following results: (1) Maternal verbal strategy was more than physical strategy. (2) Maternal ambiguous verbal guidance positively predicted children’s defiance, maternal distant physical guidance positively predicted children’s passive noncompliance. (3) Maternal responsiveness had positive correlation with direct verbal guidance, ambiguous verbal guidance, positive physical guidance and distant physical guidance; had negative correlation with reprimand verbal guidance and negative physical guidance. (4) Children’s responsiveness negatively predicted passive noncompliance and refulsal/negotiation. These results indicate that noncompliance in toddlerhood has a close relation with the pattern of mother-child interaction and mothers should pay more attention on their strategies to cope with children’s noncompliance.

Key words: toddler, noncompliance, maternal control strategy, maternal responsiveness, child responsiveness

摘要： 通过对138名北京市的学步期儿童及其母亲的观察研究，分析儿童的不顺从行为与亲子互动之间的关系。结果表明：（1）在亲子互动中，母亲的言语策略多于身体策略。（2）母亲的模糊言语显著地正向预测儿童的反抗，母亲的远处身体指导显著地正向预测消极不顺从。（3）母亲的反应性与明晰言语、模糊言语、积极身体指导和远处身体指导正相关，与严厉言语和消极身体指导负相关。（4）儿童反应性负向预测消极不顺从和拒绝/协商行为。

关键词: 学步儿童、不顺从、母亲策略性、母亲反应性、儿童反应性