Explicating the Structure of Emotion Dialogues: Maternal Reminiscing Factors Differentially Relate to Parenting and Child Outcomes

• In Event: 2-134 - Parent-Child Emotion Dialogues in Families Exposed to Violence and Abuse: Associations with Parenting and Child Outcomes

Integrative Statement

Mother-child reminiscing about past emotional experiences facilitates a range of child socio-emotional and cognitive outcomes, and is a target of many parent-child intervention approaches. To advance understanding of the multidimensional nature of this clinically significant process, the current investigation examined the structure of maternal contributions to reminiscing and how emergent factors related to parenting and child outcomes across two diverse samples (total N = 337).
We anticipated that maternal reminiscing would be defined by multiple dimensions, including factual elaborations, emotional elaborations, and sensitive guidance. Moreover, we predicted that sensitive guidance would relate most strongly to children’s emotional outcomes whereas factual elaborations would relate most strongly to language. Lastly, we anticipated that reminiscing factors would predict childrens’ outcomes over and above general parenting factors because supportive emotion socialization interactions such as reminiscing are recognized as an important context for promoting children’s development.
Sample one consisted of 102 racially diverse, low-income mothers and their preschool-aged children. Sample two consisted of 235 mothers and their preschool children, the majority of which had experienced substantiated maltreatment. Across both samples, dyads completed an emotional reminiscing task, with cue words varying across samples to evaluate whether the structure was robust to task cues. Dialogues were coded for the frequency of maternal elaborative content, including the number of open- and closed-ended questions, elaborations, confirmations, repetitions, and emotion questions and attributions. Dialogues were also coded for maternal sensitive guidance using the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogue scheme (AEED; Koren-Karie et al., 2003). Reliability was established (ICCs > .80) for both samples. Mothers reported on their positive and inconsistent parenting using the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire – Preschool Revision (APQ-PR; Clerkin et al., 2007), and parental sensitivity was directly observed in sample two using the Maternal Behavior Q-Sort (MBQS; Pederson et al., 2012). Across both samples, children’s receptive language was measured via the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and internalizing and externalizing symptoms were measured via standardized parental report.
Across both samples, exploratory factor analyses demonstrated that maternal reminiscing was defined by three factors: (1) factual elaborations, (2) emotional elaborations, and (3) sensitive guidance (see Table 1.1). In sample one, only sensitive guidance was negatively correlated with inconsistent parenting and child internalizing and externalizing, and positively with child language. In sample two, factual elaborations and sensitive guidance both correlated negatively with inconsistent parenting and child internalizing and externalizing, and positively with parental sensitivity and child language. Emotional elaborations were unrelated to parenting and child outcomes across both samples. Using multiple regression, only sensitive guidance had incremental predictive value over and above other parenting behaviors, and explained additional variance in child language in sample one and both child language and internalizing in sample two (see Table 1.2).
Our findings demonstrate that maternal reminiscing is a multidimensional construct comprised of distinct factors on which mothers may vary. Maternal sensitive guidance was the only reminiscing factor to predict children’s outcomes over and above other parenting behaviors across two diverse samples. Findings have important implications for understanding emotion socialization among diverse families.

Authors

• Christina G. McDonnell, University of Western Ontario, Canada
  Presenting Author

• Kristin Valentino, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• Monica Lawson, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ruth Speidel, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kaitlin Fondren, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author