Activity, talking time, and spontaneous agreement in disturbed and normal family interaction.

Disturbed and normal family triads were compared in their time spent talking during family discussions, number of action units initiated during these discussions, and agreements over questionnaire items independently completed prior to discussion. Normal family systems manifested significantly longer discussion times, and the individual family members could be more clearly differentiated from each other in their time spent talking. Number of action units initiated did not differentiate the family systems, but normal family members could again be discriminated more clearly from each other. Normal families also achieved significantly higher agreement scores on the prediscussion questionnaire. The relationship of these findings to earlier results reported by this author and comparisons with other evolving models of family interaction processes were discussed. Several investigators in the area of family interaction and psychopathology have begun to formulate models of disturbed and normal family functioning based upon hypotheses derived from empirical research. In particular,