When we embarked on this study there was a growing body of research that highlighted the importance of mother-father-child interactions in families of toddlers, but little was known about the internal processes underlying parenting in such interactions. Dyadic studies of parent-child relationships have focused on parental insightfulness as promoting sensitive parent-child interactions, and the goal of the present study was to examine whether insightfulness would similarly be associated with cooperative triadic interactions. To address this question seventy-seven mother-father-toddler triads were observed in the Lausanne Trilogue Play (LTP) procedure to assess family cooperation, and the insightfulness of each parent was assessed using the Insightfulness Assessment, a video replay procedure in which parents are interviewed regarding their children’s thoughts and feelings after watching short video clips of the children. The results showed that families in which both parents were insightful had higher Family Cooperation and Co-parenting scores compared to families in which only one parent was insightful and families in which neither parent was insightful.

The study was based on Dr. Inbal Marcu's dissertation and was done in collaboration with Prof. Nina Koren-Karie. To read full article

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