Expanding the Angle of Vision on Working-Class Children’s Stories

Miller, Peggy J.; Cho, Grace E.; Bracey, Jeana

doi:10.1159/000085518

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…It is important to know if an adult interviewer has augmented an open-ended spoken question with misleading information in gesture, and if a child witness has conveyed information in gestures and not in speech. Children do use gestures when describing events they have personally witnessed (Miller, Cho, & Bracey, 2005), and those gestures often convey information not found in their speech (Goldin-Meadow, 2003; Goldin-Meadow et al, 1993). If an interviewer picks up on this silent information and incorporates it into later questioning, it is critical to know that it was the child, and not the interviewer, who first introduced the information into testimony.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Truth Is at Hand

Broaders

Goldin‐Meadow²

2010

Psychol Sci

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The accuracy of information obtained in forensic interviews is critically important to credibility in our legal system. Research has shown that the way interviewers frame questions influences the accuracy of witnesses’ reports. A separate body of research has shown that speakers spontaneously gesture when they talk, and that these gestures can express information not found anywhere in the speaker’s talk. This study of children interviewed about an event that they witnessed joins these two literatures and demonstrates that (1) interviewers’ gestures serve as a source of information and, at times, misinformation that can lead witnesses to report incorrect details; (2) the gestures witnesses spontaneously produce during interviews convey substantive information that is often not conveyed anywhere in their speech, and thus would not appear in written transcripts of the proceedings. These findings underscore the need to attend to and document gestures produced in investigative interviews, particularly interviews conducted with children.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Truth Is at Hand

Broaders

Goldin‐Meadow²

2010

Psychol Sci

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“…For example, work on personal storytelling, closely related to reminiscing, suggests that co-narrated story telling might be more frequent in working class than middle class families (Burger & Miller, 1999). Working class families have been found to produce more stories surrounding negative experiences (especially with regards to physical harm and aggression) (Miller, Cho, & Bracey, 2005) than do middle class families (in part because these are more frequent experiences in their lives). Thus, these stories may help prepare children for the hardship that will be part of their daily lives in poor neighborhoods.…”

Section: Reminiscing and Sociomoral Development 311mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2013

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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.

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“…Cultural critics have argued that much of the above debate is severely narrow in its cultural outlook, pointing out that the kind of infant-directed, contingent reciprocal conversation between mothers and infants researched above is anomalous in terms of global cultural practices (Blum, 2017;Henrich et al, 2010;Sperry et al, 2019b) and is socioculturally defined (Brown & Gaskins, 2014;Miller et al, 2005aMiller et al, , 2005bOchs et al, 2012;Rogoff, 2003). It is observed that children in societies where there is very little direct interaction with infants nevertheless reach linguistic milestones at a similar rate (Brown & Gaskins, 2014).…”

Section: The Motherhood Debate As Regime Of Truth: An Outline Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regimes of motherhood: Social class, the word gap and the optimisation of mothers’ talk

Allen

Spencer

2022

The Sociological Review

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The role of working class mothers’ talk in explaining their child’s ‘impoverished’ language development and the resulting ‘word gap’ between social classes is hotly debated. Academic research in this area spans decades, crosses continents, and gathers up a wide range of disciplines and positions, ranging from research seeking to intervene in and optimise mothers’ talk, to research that vigorously criticises any attempt to do so. Through an extended analysis of Jacques Donzelot’s seminal study The Policing of Families, and Michel Foucault’s concept of a ‘regime of truth’, we explore how motherhood is constructed by academic debate as something to be endlessly optimised. Academic debate functions by (1) reducing expectations concerning the role and remit of experts so as to place the onus on mothers to implement findings which the former will facilitate, (2) complicating the contributing factors to language delay, thus avoiding apportioning blame too directly whilst giving endless cause to do further research, and (3) committing mothers to a permanent labour in which they are expected to better themselves as measured by the manifest language development of their children. Its strongest critics remain within the constraints of this regime of truth to the extent that they argue for humility of expertise, for recognition of broader sociocultural factors, and for the importance of privileging the expertise and agency of mothers. This article considers how all parties are, in effect, obliged to declare the truth of motherhood and will find themselves implicated in its governance.

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Expanding the Angle of Vision on Working-Class Children’s Stories

Cited by 5 publications

References 7 publications

Truth Is at Hand

Truth Is at Hand

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

Regimes of motherhood: Social class, the word gap and the optimisation of mothers’ talk

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