The 1990s has witnessed an explosion of theories and research directed toward understanding the processes by which specific external events and experiences impact children in ways that impede development and increase the likelihood of behavioral problems. Scholars have moved beyond establishing associations between the events to which children are exposed and their current and subsequent behavioral adjustment, to identifying and investigating internal cognitive and emotional processes that could explain these associations. This focus on process is nowhere more apparent than with respect to the wellestablished connection between marital conflict and children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors (Emery, 1988).

In a seminal paper, Grych and Fincham (1990) proposed a model in which children's perceptions of marital conflict mediate its impact on their behavior. These perceptions are influenced in turn by characteristics of the marital conflict context, interpreted through the lens of children's past experience with conflict and their age-related cognitive abilities to make causal inferences, engage in causal reasoning, and take the perspective of others. In their model, affect is the result of cognitive processing, but also influences attributions, memory, contemplation of coping strategies in relation to the marital conflict, and hence behavior. Nevertheless, in discussing the implications of their framework, Grych and Fincham emphasized cognitive mediating processes, noting only that “children's ability to regulate emotional arousal (and other variables) … are also likely to be important factors” (p. 286).

In two subsequent conceptualizations of the processes linking marital conflict and children's behavioral adjustment, Crockenberg and Forgays (1994; 1996), in their specific emotions model, and Davies and Cummings (1994; 1995), in their emotional security model, elaborated Grych and Fincham's (1990) framework, giving emotion a more pivotal explanatory role.