Relations of Mother-Child Internal State Talk to Children’s Socio-Emotional Functioning: The Moderating Role of Culture

• In Event: 2-040 - Cultural Influences on Children’s Socialization through Reminiscing

Integrative Statement

Internal state language is a critical element in meaning-making of one’s past experiences, which hold implications for one’s socio-emotional functioning. In the developmental context, mother-child memory conversation serves as a vital medium for mothers to scaffold children to talk about their internal states, such as feelings and subjective preferences. During these conversations, maternal references to children’s internal states have been found to predict lower levels of internalizing and externalizing problems in children. Yet, culture influences the values and norms about communicating one’s subjective experiences. In cultures where individuality and self-expression are prized, sharing one’s internal states is encouraged as it is regarded as direct expressions of the self and affirms the importance of the self as well as facilitates emotion regulation. Conversely, in cultures where social connectedness and social conformity are emphasized, expressions of internal states are discouraged and considered as inappropriate because they are viewed as disruptive to social harmony. Such differences suggest that culture may play a moderating role in the relationship between mother-child talk about internal states and children’s socio-emotional functioning. The present study thus sought to examine the relations of mother-child talk about internal states to children’s socio-emotional functioning, concurrently and longitudinally, in the European-American and Chinese immigrant contexts.

Participants were 68 European-American and 62 Chinese immigrant mother-child pairs. When children were at aged 6.6, all mother-child pairs were asked to talk about one past event that they experienced together. Mothers’ and children’s utterances were coded separately. Specifically, utterances about child’s internal states (including emotions and subjective perspectives) were coded. When children were at aged 6.6 and 8.0, mothers responded to the Behavioral Assessment System for Children, which assessed children’s behavioral symptoms (such as withdrawal and atypical behaviors) and socially adaptive skills (such as functional communication and leadership).

In terms of predicting outcomes at the concurrent time-point (see Table 1), European-American mothers’ talk about subjective perspectives predicted children’s behavioral symptoms negatively and socially adaptive skills positively, whereas no relationship was found in the Chinese immigrant sample. On the other hand, Chinese immigrant mothers’ and children’s talk about emotions predicted children’s behavioral symptoms positively and socially adaptive skills negatively, whereas no relationship was found in the European-American sample.

In terms of predicting longitudinal outcomes (see Table 2), European-American mothers’ and children’s talk about emotion predicted children’s socially adaptive skills positively, whereas Chinese immigrant mothers’ and children’s talk about emotion predicted children’s socially adaptive skills negatively. Furthermore, Chinese children’s talk about emotion predicted behavioral symptoms positively, whereas no such relationship was found in the European-American sample.

Taken together, the findings revealed that mother-child talk about internal states relates to children’s socio-emotional functioning positively in the European-American context, but negatively in the Chinese immigrant context, both concurrently and longitudinally. Cultural boundaries of internal state language as an element of positive meaning-making of personal experiences will be discussed.

Authors

• Jessie Bee Kim Koh, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
  Presenting Author

• Qi Wang, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author