Meaning-Making of Positive Experiences During Mother-Child Reminiscing and Children’s Positive Adaptation: A Longitudinal Cross-Cultural Study

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Attention, Learning, Memory

Abstract

The meaning-making of emotional experiences matters to psychological adaptation. In the developmental context, the ways in which mothers recollect and discuss emotional experiences with children have been found to be critical to children’s processing, understanding and regulation of emotions as well as their well-being. Most of the studies to date have focused on the meaning-making of negative experiences during mother-child reminiscing and the relation to children’s well-being. As positive experiences are considered to be all well and void of problems, meaning-making of positive experiences during mother-child reminiscing and the relation to children’s psychological adaptation have received little research attention. Yet meaning-making of positive experiences during mother-child reminiscing may uniquely contribute to children’s psychological adaptation.

Mother-child reminiscing about positive experiences may model to children how to capitalize on their positive feelings and further develop understanding of positive emotions. Broaden-and-build theory posits that positive emotions broaden one’s momentary thought-action repertoires, which then serves to build one’s enduring physical and psychological resources. How mothers scaffold children to re-experience and understand positive emotions during reminiscing of positive experiences may thus broaden children’s cognitive-behavioral repertories and facilitate positive psychological attributes. Importantly, emotional expression and experience vary across cultures. In particular, whereas Western cultures prize positive emotions, East Asian cultures approach positive and negative emotions even-handedly. The present study sought to examine European-American and Chinese immigrant mother-child reminiscing about positive experiences and the longitudinal relations to positive cognitions and broad-minded coping in children.

Participants were 34 European-American and 22 Chinese immigrant mother-child pairs (30 boys). When children were aged 4.5, mother-child pairs recollected one positive experience. Positive emotion terms and attributions of positive emotions to children were coded. When children were aged 7, mothers completed a coping questionnaire. Positive thinking and optimistic thinking constituted positive cognitions. Cognitive decision making, direct problem solving and seeking understanding constituted broad-minded coping.

Interestingly, Chinese immigrant mothers made more attributions of positive emotions to children than did European-American mothers, t(54) = 1.77, p < .10. Chinese immigrant children showed lesser cognitive decision making, t(54) = 1.78, p < .10, and lesser direct problem solving, t(54) = 2.31, p < .05, than European-American children. Independent of culture, mothers’ attributions of positive emotions to children was positively associated with positive thinking in children, r = .32, p < .05. Furthermore, Chinese immigrant mothers’ attributions of positive emotions to children were positively associated with positive thinking, r = .41, p < .10 and direct problem solving in children, r = .39, p < .10. Surprisingly, European-American mothers’ attributions of positive emotions to children was negatively associated with seeking understanding in children, r = -.45, p < .05.

Taken together, the findings underscore that meaning-making of positive experiences during mother-child reminiscing may contribute to children’s positive adaptation. However, the effects may be culturally bounded. We discuss the findings in light of acculturation, family socialization, and child development in a changing cultural world.

Authors

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

• Qi Wang, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author