Origins of mother–child reminiscing style

Abstract

Maternal elaborative reminiscing supports preschool children's autobiographical memory, self-concept, and emotion understanding. What are the factors contributing to mothers' elaborative style of reminiscing? In a longitudinal community sample (n = 170 at the final data point), this study explored the role of maternal depression (8-44 months), maternal sensitivity and maternal mind-mindedness (8 months), as well as child factors of joint attention (15 months), attachment security (15 months), and language (26 months) for mother-child reminiscing about a positive (happy) and a negative (scared) event at 44 months. Mothers could be classed into two groups of low versus increasing depression from 8 to 44 months, yet maternal depression did not uniquely predict mother-child reminiscing after accounting for maternal sensitivity and other factors. Instead, maternal sensitivity, children's joint attention, and language uniquely predicted children's elaborations about the scared event at 44 months, and maternal sensitivity uniquely predicted mothers' elaborations about the scared event at 44 months. Mothers who are more sensitive in early interactions may later be better at engaging their children when reminiscing about negative emotions. These findings have implications for the design of interventions targeted at supporting mothers to engage in elaborative reminiscing with their preschool children.

Maternal Reminiscing and Autobiographical Memory Features of Mother–Child Dyads in a Cross‐Cultural Context

“…Nonetheless, only child age and language emerged as unique predictors of child memory specificity. This is in line with past research that found the ability to independently recall experiences in young children is dependent on verbal abilities and age (Farrant & Reese, 2000; McDonnell et al, 2016; Nieto, Ros, Mateo, Ricarte, & Latorre, 2017; Reese et al, 2018). In the AMT‐PV, for a memory to be considered as “specific,” children are required to generate a sentence which contains an event that happened on a particular day.…”

“…Thus, child age, gender, and linguistic skill were included as covariates in subsequent analyses. Finally, given the recent theoretical emphasis on formal schooling as an important activity in modern societies to promote an individual’s cultural‐oriented self (e.g., autonomy‐oriented or relatedness‐oriented)—a salient element influencing one’s reminiscing and autobiographical memory (de la Mata et al, 2019; Reese, Meins, Fernyhough, & Centifanti, 2018), maternal education was also entered as a covariate in the following analyses.…”

Attachment and Memory Research: Reflecting on a Shared Past and a Collaborative Future

“…For instance, given our new correlational findings that maternal sensitivity with infants uniquely predicts later mother–child elaboration about fear events (Reese et al, ), an extension would be to first test whether similar associations are present in samples of children who are at risk of developing anxiety problems, perhaps on the basis of infant temperament measures. If the same associations are present in an at‐risk sample as in the community sample, then work could proceed on designing a reminiscing intervention for parents of anxious preschoolers.…”

“…We went on to demonstrate that when children were securely attached as toddlers, their mothers reminisced with them in emotionally more open ways into the preschool years (Newcombe & Reese, 2004), and these emotionladen discussions were related to children developing a more consistent representation of self (Bird & Reese, 2006). A limitation of some of the reminiscing literature with respect to attachment security has been the reliance on maternal sorts or ratings of attachment security rather than observer sorts or ratings (but see Bost et al, 2006;Coppola et al, 2014;Hsiao et al, 2015;Reese, Meins, Fernyhough, & Centifanti, 2018 for exceptions). In contrast, Posada and Waters's current measures of children's attachment behavior rely on observer ratings rather than maternal ratings.…”

“…Lawson et al found that although insecure attachment representations were linked to less elaborative and emotion-rich reminiscing among nonmaltreating mothers, no such association existed for maltreating mothers. Therefore, my own belief is that we need to do additional careful correlational work with at-risk samples, such as in Lawson et al, before implementing conversational interventions with those families. For instance, given our new correlational findings that maternal sensitivity with infants uniquely predicts later mother-child elaboration about fear events (Reese et al, 2018), an extension would be to first test whether similar associations are present in samples of children who are at risk of developing anxiety problems, perhaps on the basis of infant temperament measures. If the same associations are present in an at-risk sample as in the community sample, then work could proceed on designing a reminiscing intervention for parents of anxious preschoolers.…”