Constructing Emotional and Relational Understanding: The Role of Mother–Child Reminiscing about Negatively Valenced Events

Abstract

Although there is some evidence from cross-sectional studies that reminiscing is an important context in which children construct socioemotional understanding, longitudinal evidence is lacking. The goal of this study was to examine longitudinally the links between the quality of reminiscing at 42 months and children's subsequent socioemotional development at 48 months. At 42 months, mothers and children reminisced about a past negatively-valenced emotional event. These conversations were coded for maternal elaboration, the children's contribution and engagement, and the degree to which meaning was co-constructed by the dyad. At 42 and 48 months, children took part in laboratory measures of socioemotional development. Whereas there were few links between concurrent reminiscing quality and sociomoral development, aspects of reminiscing quality at 42 months (including children's engagement and the dyad's co-construction of meaning) were related to children's emotional understanding, empathy, representations of relationships, and moral-self at 48 months. This study provides some of the first longitudinal evidence that reminiscing conversations are linked with children's subsequent sociomoral understanding.

He Says, She Says: Mothers and Children Remembering the Same Events

“…In contrast, when recalling negative events, mothers and children focused more inward, on the child's feelings and thoughts, and exhibited both shared perspectives and divergent views of the child's subjective experiences. This is consistent with research showing that, when remembering aversive events, individuals frequently think about and reflect on their inner experiences to discern personal meanings (Fivush & Baker‐Ward, ) and that young children learn to do so from sharing memories with their parents (Ackil, Van Abbema, & Bauer, ; Bird & Reese, ; Laible, Murphy, & Augustine, ; Wang & Fivush, ; Wang et al., ).…”

‘Theory of mind’ development of Pakistani children: Do preschoolers acquire an understanding of desire, pretence and belief in a universal sequence?

“…Quality of mental state talk is also highlighted by the exclusive relationship of maternal attuned mental state terms and children's TOM performance (Meins, Fernyhough, Arnott, Leekam, & de Rosnay, 2013). Even mother -child dyads' reminiscences about the child's past negative emotion, maternal elaboration (Laible, 2011) and the child's attention (Laible, Murphy, & Augustine, 2013) have been found to relate to the development of emotion understanding in two studies.…”

O estilo de reminiscência nas interações mãe-criança e pai-criança

“…Destes, embora alguns tenham evidenciado poucas diferenças (e.g., Fivush, 1998;Reese, Haden, & Fivush, 1996), outros apresentaram diferenças ao nível da reminiscência mãe-criança e pai-criança, nomeadamente na extensão do discurso e na conversação de eventos emocionais (e.g., Fivush, Brotman, Buckner, & Goodman, 2000), sendo notória a necessidade de se realizar uma análise mais profunda e pormenorizada destas diferenças (Laible, Murphy, & Augustine, 2013). Na verdade, poucos estudos incidem, ainda, sobre os efeitos da reminiscência pai-criança no desenvolvimento socio emocional desta.…”