Decade Review: Observing Marital Interaction

Abstract

This article reviews the advances made in the decade of the 1990s in observing marital interaction. Many technological advances in data collection, including synchronization of physiology, behavior, and cognition, and advances in data analysis such as sequential analysis, have yielded new understanding and advances in prediction of marital outcomes. The advances have also included the study of developmental processes, including the transition to parenthood and the study of midlife and older marriages. Central advances have been made in the study of affect and the study of power and in their integration. This advance has included the mathematical modeling of interaction using nonlinear difference equations and the development of typologies. There has been an added focus on health outcomes and the bidirectional effects of marriages on children. There has been an expansion of the study of marital interaction to common comorbid psychopathologies. Most important has been emergent theorizing based on the interaction of behavior, perception, and physiology, as well as their predictive power.