ABSTRACT

The Young Family Interaction Coding System (YFICS) is an observational coding system that was designed to assess family interactions beyond the dyadic level-that is, to assess verbal and nonverbal behavior among multiple members of a family. In particular, the YFICS was designed to examine interactions among new parents and their 24-month-old child. This system is most appropriate for family interactions with young children (2 to 3 years of age) because it attempts to capture interactions around regulation of emotion and support for autonomy within a family context, issues that are important developmentally for 2-to 3-year-old children. The YFICS is used with a family play task in which parents are asked to build something together as a family. When the task is complete, parents are asked to have the 2-year-old clean up. This task elicits information about the affective quality of family exchanges, the parents’ strategies for approaching the task (whether they promote autonomous functioning in the child), and the ex-tent to which the parents assist the child in regulating emotion and maintaining a positive and enthusiastic approach to the task.