conflictual issues. Dynamic components of these exchanges,
including who started the conflicts, who ended them,
and how long they lasted, were identified. Mediation
analyses revealed that a high proportion of conflicts ended
by adolescents was associated with longer conflicts, which
in turn predicted perceptions of the ‘‘hot’’ issue as unresolved
and adolescent behavior problems. The findings
illustrate advantages of using sequential analysis to identify
patterns of interactions and, with some certainty, obtain an
estimate of the contingent relationship between a pattern of
behavior and child and parental outcomes. These interaction
patterns are discussed in terms of the roles that parents
and children play when in conflict with each other, and the
processes through which these roles affect conflict resolution
and adolescents’ behavior problems.