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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Parent-child discussion of past emotional events supports children’s understanding of their emotions in everyday situations. The quality of these dialogues is important for children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development. Less is known, however, about emotion reminiscing in high-risk populations. This symposium will present four studies of emotional reminiscing among families with a background of maltreatment and/or socio-economic adversity. New findings related to the structure and functions of emotion dialogues in high-risk families will be presented, including associations with parenting and child outcomes (language, self-concept, internalizing, externalizing and posttraumatic stress symptoms).
The first presentation will report on the factor structure of maternal contributions to emotion dialogues. Analyses in two samples indicated that reminiscing was defined by three factors: factual elaborations, emotional elaborations, and sensitive guidance. Sensitive guidance had incremental predictive value over and above other parenting behaviors to explain additional variance in child language and internalizing. The second talk examines the factor structure of parents’ and children’s contributions to emotion dialogues, and reports that sensitive guidance/engagement and resolution of negative feelings represent distinct dimensions of dialogues. The third talk examines dialogues as a relevant context to evaluate boundary dissolution and presents novel data to demonstrate advantages of examining boundary dissolution during discussions of child emotion compared to free play. The fourth talk examines how maternal and/or child trauma history affect the content of mother-child emotion dialogues and the quality of the parent-child interactions. Trauma in either member of the dyad is associated with less parent sensitivity, child cooperation, and coherent narratives.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chairs

• J. Clasien De Schipper, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

• Kristin Valentino, University of Notre Dame

Individual Presentations

• Explicating the Structure of Emotion Dialogues: Maternal Reminiscing Factors Differentially Relate to Parenting and Child Outcomes - Presenting Author: Christina G. McDonnell, University of Western Ontario, Canada; Non-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

• Dimensional Structure of Parent-child Emotion Dialogue: Associations with Internalizing, Externalizing and Trauma Symptoms - Presenting Author: J. Clasien De Schipper, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Non-Presenting Author: Marleen HM De Moor, Child and Family Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Non-Presenting Author: Mathilde Margaretha Overbeek, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Non-Presenting Author: Carlo Schuengel, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

• Contributions of Mother-Child Emotional Reminiscing for the Study of Boundary Dissolution - Presenting Author: Amy K Nuttall, Michigan State University; Non-Presenting Author: Ruth Speidel, University of Notre Dame; Non-Presenting Author: Kristin Valentino, University of Notre Dame

• Trauma Exposure Related to Mother-Child Emotion Conversation Content and Quality of Mother-Child Interaction - Non-Presenting Author: Mathilde Margaretha Overbeek, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Non-Presenting Author: Nina Koren-Karie, University of Haifa, School of Social Work; Non-Presenting Author: Adi Ben-Haim, University of Haifa, School of Social Work; Presenting Author: Carlo Schuengel, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam