The Moderator Role of Maternal Attachment Between Mothers’ and Children’s Elaborativeness In Mother-Child Reminiscing

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Within the scope of socio-developmental perspective of autobiographical memory, mother-child memory conversations are essential, and maternal reminiscing style has a significant role in children’s memory outcomes. Previous literature revealed the predictive value of mothers’ high elaborative reminiscing style for high elaborativeness of children (Nelson & Fivush, 2004; Waters et al., 2019), however maternal attachment was not investigated comprehensively as an individual difference of mothers. A few studies indicated contradictory results for mothers’ attachment anxiety and avoidance (Fivush & Sales, 2006; Lawson et al., 2018; Şahin-Acar et al., 2019. The main objective of the current study is to investigate the predictive value of mothers’ elaborativeness for children’s elaborativeness, through the moderator role of mothers’ romantic attachment insecurity in this relationship. Another objective is to examine this relationship cross-sectionally. Through the trained psychology students, 288 mothers and their 51-72 months of children were recruited, and home visits were completed. During home visits, mother-child dyads reminisced for 5 minutes, and maternal attachment was assessed by ECR-R inventory. The dyads’ conversations were coded individually in terms of elaboration phrases and repetitions in accordance with the coding schemes (Fivush et al., 1995; Fivush, & Vasudeva, 2002). According to moderation analyses with Process in SPSS, the findings revealed that children’s age group was an important factor to examine relationships. In 4-year-olds, maternal attachment anxiety moderated the relationship between elaborativeness of dyads, and mothers’ high elaborativeness was associated with children’s high elaborativeness in lower anxiety scores. In the 5-years-olds and 4 to 6-year-olds, significant moderator role of maternal attachment anxiety was not obtained; however, mothers’ elaborativeness predicted children’s elaborativeness. The findings were viewed by age and competency differences in memory and language skills of children (Nelson & Fivush, 2004; Aydın, 2016), and anxiety-related interrupting behaviors of mothers’ (Kunce & Shaver, 1994). In addition, maternal attachment avoidance did not have a moderator role in dyads’ elaborativeness in 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds and 4 to 6-year-olds. This finding was interpreted by the change in the avoidance’s function in relation to within-culture differences in mothers’ individuation, educational levels and SES. The current study had a number of contributions to the existing literature, by examining the role of maternal attachment in autobiographical memory development and underlining the importance of children’s age on autobiographical memory development.

Authors

• Aysu Alkis, Middle East Technical University
  Presenting Author

• Yagmur Ilgun, Middle East Technical University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Basak Sahin-Acar, Middle East Technical University
  Non-Presenting Author