Elaboration and Autonomy Support in Low-Income Mothers' Reminiscing: Links to Children's Autobiographical Narratives

Maternal elaboration and autonomy support during reminiscing facilitate middle-class children's autobiographical narrative skills. In this study, low-income Hispanic, White, and Black mothers' elaboration and autonomy support in reminiscing were examined in relation to children's joint and independent autobiographical narratives and engagement. Sixty preschool children discussed three past events with their mothers and one past event with a researcher. Maternal elaboration was related to children's joint and independent autobiographical narratives, and autonomy support was related to children's joint and independent engagement. Hispanic mothers used a less elaborative style during conversations about misbehavior, and Hispanic children tended to have less advanced independent autobiographical narratives. Maternal elaboration and autonomy support appear to play different roles in children's autobiographical narratives. Further, reminiscing may serve different purposes in different racial/ethnic groups.     

Maternal structure and autonomy support in conversations about the past: contributions to children's autobiographical memory

The authors examined the contributions of maternal structure and autonomy support to children's collaborative and independent reminiscing. Fifty mother-child dyads discussed past experiences when the children were 40 and 65 months old. Children also discussed past events with an experimenter at each age. Maternal structure and autonomy support appeared as 2 distinct and separable components of mothers' reminiscing style and acted in an additive fashion to predict children's memory. Children whose mothers demonstrated both high structure and high autonomy support provided the greatest memory in these conversations, whereas children whose mothers were low on both dimensions provided minimal memory. The authors discuss the implications of these effects for children's autobiographical memory development.     

The Bonds that Remind Us: Maternal Reminiscing for Bonding Purposes in Relation to Children's Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance

The present study investigated the relation between characteristics of mother–child reminiscing and children's perceived competence and social acceptance. We focused specifically on conversations for bonding purposes (i.e., conversations that serve the function of maintaining or strengthening the relationship between the child and the mother) as bonding may be a particularly salient context for the development of self‐views. Fifty‐two mothers and their 4‐year‐old children engaged in a past‐talk conversation where mothers were instructed to try to bond with their children. Children's perceived cognitive and physical competence and maternal and peer acceptance, along with language, were measured. Our results indicated that characteristics of maternal talk, particularly maternal support of child's autonomy and child‐centred content, were strongly related to children's perceived social acceptance. Although weaker, there were also associations between maternal talk and children's perceived competence. Results are discussed in light of theories arguing in favour of parent–child discourse as a mechanism for self‐development. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

亲子自传叙事中母亲语言支架的研究综述

亲子自传叙事中母亲的语言支架指母亲在对过去事件进行回忆和交流的过程中给儿童提供的引导性语言。母亲语言支架的风格分为高详尽和低详尽两个水平,高详尽的语言风格更能促进儿童语言、认知和社会情感的发展。在特定情绪性事件中,母亲的语言支架对儿童社会性的发展也有十分重要的影响。此外,亲子自传叙事中母亲的语言支架还存在性别和社会文化差异,且在特殊儿童身上表现出不同的特点。未来应加强对母亲语言支架的影响因素以及母亲回忆目标对语言支架的影响等问题的探讨。     

Does why we reminisce reflect how you behave? Linking maternal reminiscing goals to child behavioural and emotional problems

Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that joint mother–child reminiscence may reflect both explicit and implicit socialization goals. The present study investigates mothers' explicit socialization goals that may be enacted during joint reminiscence in relation to children's behavioural and emotional problems. Two hundred and sixty‐five mothers of 3‐ to 8‐year‐old children completed an online survey that included a measure of seven reminiscing goals (emotional understanding, behaviour control, bonding, interdependence, entertainment, memory skill development, and maintaining peer relationships). In addition, mothers completed measures of children's emotion problems, conduct problems, hyperactivity, and peer problems as well as supportive parenting and maternal attachment. Findings indicated that controlling for supportive parenting and maternal attachment, emotional understanding was a unique predictor of children's emotion problems, directing behaviour was a unique predictor of conduct problems, and bonding was a unique predictor of hyperactivity. These findings provide support for the functional nature of joint reminiscence. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maternal Style in Reminiscing: Relations to Child Individual Differences

Past research indicates that parents show distinct differences in style while reminiscing with their preschool children; across families, both fathers and mothers tend to be more elaborative (i.e., provide more contextual support) with daughters than with sons. Further, these differences in style are related to children's performance in such conversations. This study examines within-family similarity in maternal style and the relations between maternal style and child gender and temperament. Mothers from 16 families, each with one male and one female child aged 3 and 5 years, participated individually in memory conversations. Results indicated that mothers showed similar use of elaborations across children but used more repetitions and evaluations in conversations with younger children. Contrary to previous research, maternal style was not related to child gender; however, relations were found between child temperament and maternal style. Results are discussed in relation to the social interaction model of autobiographical memory.     

Becoming a teller of tales: associations between children's fictional narratives and parent-child reminiscence narratives

Previous research has revealed a connection between the contributions parents make while reminiscing and their children’s narratives for personally experienced events. The current research expands the literature by focusing on the connection between parental reminiscing and children’s production of fictional narratives. After 4- to 9-year-olds and their parents reminisced about past shared events, the children (with an experimenter) produced narratives based on wordless picture books. The results revealed that the overall quality of the fictional narratives was correlated with parents’ provision statements that emphasized orientation and evaluation in the reminiscence narrative. For younger children, correlations held for reminiscence narratives about recent events. For older children, correlations held for reminiscence narratives about events from the distant past. The results are consistent with the suggestion that children learn general storytelling skills from adult models.     

Children's and Mothers' Contribution to Joint Reminiscing in Different Sociocultural Contexts: Who Speaks and What is Said

The study compares mothers' conversation with their 4‐year‐old children about two past events in two autonomy‐oriented (35 German and 42 Swedish families), one relatedness‐oriented (22 Cameroonian Nso families) and one autonomy‐relatedness oriented (38 Estonian families) contexts. German mothers were rather similar to Swedish mothers in talking a lot, providing a lot of information and engaging children into conversation, but they differed from Swedish mothers by talking more about social content. Swedish children were more independent conversational partners to their mothers than other children, including German children. Estonian mothers' contribution to conversation was similar to Cameroonian Nso mothers, except that they asked a lot of open‐ended questions to engage children in conversations. Estonian children did not differ from Swedish and German children in their contribution to conversations. Compared to Swedish mothers, past event talk of Estonian mothers was characterized by a bigger proportion of talk devoted to social content, but also to the child, mental states and non‐social content. It was characteristic of Cameroonian Nso mothers that they focused more on other people and actions, and their conversational dominance was larger. Differences in reminiscing were consistent with different cultural models of self and the type of autonomy – psychological or action – promoted. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investigating whether maternal memory specificity is indirectly associated with child memory specificity through maternal reminiscing

Maternal reminiscing and remembering has a profound influence on the development of children’s autobiographical remembering skills. The current study investigated the relationships between maternal memory specificity, maternal reminiscing and child memory specificity. Participants consisted of 40 mother–child dyads. Children’s age ranged between 3.5 and 6 years. Mothers and children participated in individual assessments of autobiographical memory specificity. Dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about three past emotional (happy, sad, stressful) events. A positive moderate association was found between maternal autobiographical memory specificity and child autobiographical memory specificity. Maternal autobiographical memory specificity was significantly correlated with mothers’ focus on the task, involvement and reciprocity, resolution of negative feelings, and structuring of narratives in the mother–child reminiscing task. Moderate positive associations were found between maternal focus and structuring and child memory specificity. There was no evidence to suggest maternal elaborative reminiscing style was significantly positively correlated with mother or child memory specificity. Finally, there was support for an indirect pathway between maternal memory specificity and child memory specificity through quality of support and guidance provided by the mother in maternal reminiscing. Theoretical and clinical implications are considered.     

Maternal Style and Children's Participation in Reminiscing: Stepping Stones in Children's Autobiographical Memory Development

In this study we investigated maternal and child factors in children's autobiographical memory development. Fifty-eight mother-child dyads discussed unique past events when the children were 19, 25, 32, and 40 months old. In addition, children participated in experimenter-child interviews about unique events when they were 25, 32, and 40 months old. The developmental progression to children's independent verbal memory begins with children's early interest in participating in the conversations and maternal reminiscing style, which together elicit children's later shared memory elaborations. Subsequently, children's shared memory elaborations and maternal reminiscing style both contribute to children's later independent memory at approximately 3 1/2 years of age. We address the idea that autobiographical memory development is essentially a collaborative process, with children significantly contributing to the development of their own reminiscing style from its inception.     

Content of maternal open-ended questions and statements in reminiscing with their 4-year-olds: links with independence and interdependence orientation in European contexts

Mother's open-ended questions and elaborative statements during reminiscing were analysed for their content (child agency, co-agency, non-social, and social context) in three cultural contexts. Participants were 115 mothers and their 4-year-old children: 35 dyads from Berlin, Germany, 42 from Stockholm, Sweden, and 38 from Tallinn, Estonia. Across samples the most prominent content was talk about non-social context followed by co-agency and child agency. Tallinn mothers asked the children to talk about themselves, and Berlin mothers asked the children to talk about themselves together with other people, more frequently than they talked about these contents themselves. The content was related to the cultural orientations of mothers assessed through questionnaires: the Berlin mothers whose independence/ interdependence ratio was higher talked less about other people and asked the children fewer questions about other people; the Stockholm mothers with a higher independence/interdependence ratio talked more about child agency. In Tallinn both correlations existed on a trend level. The results are discussed in the light of common conversational practices and mothers' orientation to independence and interdependence in these cultural contexts.     

Associations of Mother–Child Reminiscing about Negative Past Events,Coping, and Self‐Concept in Early Childhood

Parent–child reminiscing conversations in early childhood have received theoretical attention as a forum for children's self‐concept development, but this has been little addressed in empirical work. This study examines associations between emotion reminiscing and children's self‐concepts and, building from the reminiscing and personality development literatures, also explores the role of children's coping. Sixty 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children and their mothers completed reminiscing conversations about events in which the child had experienced negative emotion, children completed an age‐appropriate assessment of their self‐concept, and mothers and teachers reported on children's coping strategies. Children's self‐perceived timidity was associated with their explanations for negative emotions during reminiscing. Children's self‐perceived negative affect was associated with fewer emotion resolutions during reminiscing, and with distinctive patterns of coping. Both reminiscing and coping made unique contributions to children's self‐concepts, and findings also suggest that coping may in some contexts indirectly connect reminiscing with self‐concept. These findings suggest that reminiscing conversations both reflect children's characteristics and provide a context for learning about their characteristics, along with strategies for emotion management. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Early Reminiscing in Cultural Contexts: Cultural Models,Maternal Reminiscing Styles,and Children's Memories

The present study examined conversations of 164 mothers from seven different cultural contexts when reminiscing with their 3-year-old children. We chose samples based on their sociodemographic profiles, which represented three different cultural models: (1) autonomy (urban middle-class families from Western societies), (2) relatedness (rural farming families from non-Western societies), and (3) autonomy-relatedness (urban middle-class families from non-Western societies). The results showed that mothers from the autonomous contexts predominantly adopted an elaborative-evaluative reminiscing style (variable-oriented approach) and pattern (person-oriented approach). Mothers from the relational contexts mainly adopted a repetitive reminiscing style and pattern. There was greater heterogeneity for style variables among mothers from autonomous-relational contexts; in addition, the person-oriented approach revealed that the majority of mothers from autonomous-relational contexts showed hybrid style patterns. Thus, the cultural models, and their respective orientations towards autonomy and relatedness, were reflected in the way mothers reminisced with their children. The children's provision of memory elaborations was high in the autonomous contexts, low in the relational contexts, and moderate in the autonomous-relational contexts. Across contexts, maternal evaluations prompted children to contribute memory elaborations. Maternal elaborations were an additional predictor for children's memory, but only for families from the relational cultural model.     

Socialization of past event talk: Cultural differences in maternal elaborative reminiscing

This study examines mother-child reminiscing conversations with respect to variation in use and function of mothers’ elaborations, the nature of children's memory elaborations, and the connections between the two, in three Western middle-class cultures where autonomy is valued over relatedness. Mothers participated with their 4-year-old children (35 dyads from Berlin, Germany, 42 dyads from Stockholm, Sweden, and 38 from Tallinn, Estonia). Mothers’ open-ended questions predicted children's memory elaborations in Estonian dyads, mothers’ statements and verbal confirmation did so in German dyads, and verbal confirmations did so in Swedish dyads. Number of children's elaborations was similar in all three groups, but Estonian mothers were less elaborative than Swedish and German mothers. These findings contrast with previous research in which number of child elaborations has been linked to number of mother elaborations. The results suggest that different aspects of elaborative style function differently. The differences are discussed in light of culturally rooted meanings and practices of talking.     

Mothers' and fathers' support for child autonomy and early school achievement

Data were analyzed from 641 children and their families in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to test the hypotheses that in the early school years, mothers' and fathers' sensitive support for autonomy in observed parent-child interactions would each make unique predictions to children's reading and math achievement at Grade 3 (controlling for demographic variables), children's reading and math abilities at 54 months, and children's level of effortful control at 54 months and that these associations would be mediated by the level of and changes over time in children's observed self-reliance in the classroom from Grades 1 through 3. The authors found that mothers' and fathers' support for autonomy were significantly and uniquely associated with children's Grade 3 reading and math achievement with the above controls, but only for boys. For boys, the effect of mothers' support for child autonomy was mediated by higher self-reliance at Grade 1 and of fathers' support for child autonomy by greater increases in self-reliance from Grades 1 through 3.     

Age and emotional experience during mutual reminiscing

In the present article, the authors examined age differences in the emotional experiences involved in talking about past events. In Study 1, 129 adults in an experience-sampling study reported whether they were engaged in mutual reminiscing and their concurrent experience of positive and negative emotion. Their experiences of positive and negative emotion during mutual reminiscing were compared with emotional experience during other social activities. Age was associated with increasing positive emotion during mutual reminiscing. In Study 2 (n = 132), the authors examined emotions during reminiscing for specific positive and negative events. In this case, age was associated with improved emotional experiences but only during reminiscing about positive experiences. Findings are discussed in terms of socioemotional selectivity theory and the literature on reminiscence and life review.     

Using the Past to Enhance the Present: Boosting Happiness Through Positive Reminiscence

Two studies explored relations between positive reminiscing and emotional experience – a survey of naturally occurring reminiscence (Study 1) and a field experiment testing the affective consequences of two styles of reminiscing (Study 2). In Study 1, frequency of positive reminiscing predicted perceived ability to enjoy life, and students who reminisced using cognitive imagery reported a greater ability to savor positive events than those who reminisced using memorabilia. In Study 2, students were randomly assigned either to reminisce about pleasant memories using cognitive imagery, reminisce about pleasant memories using memorabilia, or think about current concerns (control condition) for 10 min twice daily for a week. Both reminiscence groups reported greater increases in the percent of time they felt happy over the past week than the control group; and happiness increased more in the cognitive imagery group than in the memorabilia group.     

Reminiscing and recounting in the preschool years

Talk about past events can be classified as either reminiscing (discussing shared experiences) or recounting (discussing unshared experiences). Reminiscing may have more of a social memory function whereas recounting may also be informational. This research focused on the form of mother–child reminiscing and recounting during the preschool years. Twenty 40‐month‐old and 20 58‐month‐old children reminisced and recounted past events with their mothers. Results showed that mothers who provided more memory information during reminiscing and requested more memory information during recounting had children who reported more unique information about the events. Regardless of maternal conversational style, however, children reported more unique memory information during recounting than reminiscing. We discuss these results in terms of the importance of both forms of remembering for autobiographical memory development. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Maternal Verbal, Affective, and Behavioral Support in Preschool Children's Independent and Collaborative Autobiographical Memory Reports

The authors investigated the individual and relative contributions of different aspects of maternal support (i.e., verbal, affective, and behavioral) in relation to children's collaborative and independent reminiscing. Four-year-old children discussed personal past experiences with their mothers and with a researcher. In collaborative recall with their mothers, children's narrative behavior was regulated best by maternal use of specific elaborative components, such as affirmations. In contrast, in children's independent recall, affective and behavioral qualities of maternal support were related to children's memory performance. Specifically, during free-recall, the dimensions of quality of instruction and respect for autonomy were significant predictors of children's narratives. In the context of prompted recall (supported by wh-questions), respect for autonomy was the only significant predictor of children's involvement in the conversations and of the amount of unique content they provided. The findings suggest that different aspects of maternal behavior facilitate different components of children's reminiscing skills, which children might apply depending on demands of the autobiographical memory conversation.     

Evaluative pressure in mothers: effects of situation, maternal, and child characteristics on autonomy supportive versus controlling behavior

This study examined the effects of situational pressure and maternal characteristics (social contingent self-worth, controlling parenting attitudes) on mothers' autonomy support versus control in the social domain. Sixty 4th-grade children and their mothers worked on a laboratory task in preparation for meeting new children, with mothers in either an evaluation (mothers told their child would be evaluated by other children) or no-evaluation (no mention of evaluation) condition. Mothers in the evaluation condition spent more time giving answers to their children. Mothers with controlling parenting attitudes exhibited more controlling behavior. Further, mothers with high social contingent self-worth in the evaluation condition were most controlling. Results suggest the importance of interactions between situations and maternal characteristics in determining levels of mothers' autonomy support versus control and have implications for helping parents support children's autonomy.