Parents’ Elaborative Reminiscing about Emotional Events and Children’s Forthcomingness Following Wrongdoing

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Early childhood comes with an increase in mistakes and wrongdoing as children begin to navigate implications of their actions, particularly in emotion-evoking situations (Widen & Russell, 2003). Some children are more forthcoming than others when a mistake or wrongdoing occurs, which has ties to later development and applications in forensic psychology (Magnusson et al., 2020). Therefore, identifying factors that may influence children’s forthcomingness is beneficial in matters of both child adjustment and safety, yet research is limited. Past literature demonstrates that children of parents who facilitate detailed and collaborative conversation surrounding emotional memories (i.e. elaborative reminiscing), tend to show better language, memory, and emotion regulation skills (Salmon & Reese, 2016). However, there are few explored connections between elaborative reminiscing of emotional events and children’s forthcomingness during wrongdoing, with even less information available as it pertains to paternal reminiscing. To address these gaps, the present study examined mothers’ and fathers’ elaborative reminiscing during triadic emotional event dialogues in relation to whether children openly confess to a perceived wrongdoing. It is hypothesized that when mothers and fathers are more elaborative, children will be more forthcoming in admitting mistakes.

This study is part of a broader study aimed at understanding connections between family communication and child moral and regulatory development. Eighty-two mothers, fathers, and their three-to-five-year-old children living in the Midwest U.S. came into the lab for a 2-hour video-recorded visit. Triads participated in a family reminiscing task and children participated in a mishap task. For the reminiscing task, parents were instructed to discuss four emotional events with their child: a time the child felt happy, sad, scared, and angry. Videos were transcribed verbatim and the frequency of elaborative wh- questions, yes/no questions, elaborative statements, and confirmations were summed and averaged, resulting in a single elaboration score representing both parents (α=.75). Interrater reliability was assessed using 20% of the sample (ICCs>.96). For the mishap task, children were made to believe they broke the experimenter’s favorite teddy bear. After the “incident,” the experimenter asked, “what happened?,” “who did it?,” and “did you do it?” Children were rated on a 3- to 4-point ordinal scale based on how forthcoming they were to each prompt, that ranged from no verbal response to verbally accepting responsibility (ICC’s>.90).

Three preliminary ordinal regressions examined parental elaborative reminiscing in predicting children’s forthcomingness in response to each of the three questions about the broken teddy bear (Table 1); subsequent analyses will examine individual maternal and paternal elaboration in predicting child forthcomingness. Parental elaboration was significantly associated with child response to the “who did it?” prompt (p=.01) and was marginally associated with response to the follow-up “did you do it?” prompt (p=.06). Specifically, parents who engage in more elaborative communication with their child tend to have children who are more likely to accept responsibility for a wrongdoing, especially when forthcomingness is not provoked. Results suggest that when parents create more opportunities for dialogue surrounding emotion-evoking events, children may feel more open and honest after events that elicit negative emotions.

Authors

• Amanda L Nowak, University of Notre Dame
  Presenting Author

• Ruth Speidel, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author