Poster #141 - Maternal Reminiscing is Associated with Preschoolers’ Reports of Maltreatment During Child Protective Service Interviews

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

The manner in which mothers discuss past events with their children (reminiscing) shapes how children remember and report experiences. Maternal use of elaborations (statements and questions adding new information) and sensitive guidance (coherence and emotional support) during reminiscing facilitates children’s memory for everyday and stressful experiences, such as an injury resulting in a visit to the emergency room (Peterson, 2012). In the current investigation, we examined associations between the elaborative and sensitive guidance of maternal reminiscing and the amount of information children recounted about particularly traumatic experiences—that is, reports of abuse and neglect during an investigative interview with child protective services. We hypothesized that the elaborative and sensitive nature of maternal reminiscing about everyday experiences would be positively associated with the amount of unique central allegation-relevant details children provided during a forensic interview regarding substantiated abuse and neglect.

Department of Child Service records for families (n = 165, children 3- to 6-years-old) who were enrolled in a larger study examining the sequelae of maltreatment were reviewed to identify children who were interviewed at the local Child Advocacy Center regarding maltreatment allegations. We identified 57 children who were enrolled in the larger study and previously interviewed about substantiated maltreatment. Videos of the forensic interviews were transcribed. Non-repetitive central allegation-relevant details reported by children were identified, summed, and square-root transformed to alleviate positive skew (ICC = .99). Following Orbach and Lamb (2000), invitation, directive, option-posing, and suggestive questions posed by interviewers were identified in addition to facilitators and non-substantive prompts (ICCs > .72). As part of the larger study, children and their mothers reminisced in the laboratory (Mdn = 193 days after the forensic interview) about times the child felt happy, sad, scared, and angry. Although reminiscing occurred after the forensic interview, maternal reminiscing styles are stable across time (Fivush et al., 2006) and this work, novel in its approach, extends upon the forensic interview literature by examining individual difference mechanisms with actual forensic interview data. Maternal elaboration represents the sum of elaborations, wh- questions, yes/no questions, and confirmations (ICCs > .77). Maternal sensitive guidance was coded following the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogue scheme (Koren-Karie et al., 2003) and represents the average rating of maternal focus, acceptance, involvement, resolution of negative feelings, and structuring (each rated on a 9-point scale, ICCs > .73).

A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted with child age and receptive language in the first block, the number of interviewers’ prompts in the second block, and maternal elaboration and sensitive guidance in the third block to determine whether maternal reminiscing is uniquely associated with children’s forensic reports. Maternal elaborative reminiscing, but not sensitive guidance, was positively associated with the amount of central details children recounted during the forensic interview. Findings extend the reminiscing literature to children’s reports of traumatic experiences outside of collaborative recall with their mothers and inform forensic interviewing of children by identifying memory socialization practices within the family as an important contributor to the amount of information children recount.

Authors

• Monica Lawson, University of Notre Dame
  Presenting Author

• Evelyn McManus, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bailey Jaeger, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

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