Caregiver-Child Conversations and Autonomy Support Across Contexts

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Caregivers use varying levels of autonomy support when discussing the past with children. Those with high autonomy support allow children to lead the conversation, while those low in support try to control the narrative. A study by Cleveland and colleagues (2007) suggests the overall goal of a conversation may influence caregivers’ level of autonomy support. In the study, caregivers watched their child complete a play activity before discussing the activity with them. Caregivers were less autonomy supportive if they believed their child’s recall of the activity would be assessed rather than their personal perception of the activity.

To the best of our knowledge, no study has examined whether autonomy support varies by conversation goal when caregivers discuss an event only witnessed by their child. While some caregivers may be especially autonomy supportive given their child is the "expert" on the event, caregivers who are motivated to collect information may still try to exert control by repeatedly asking the same questions, regardless of their child’s input, or second-guessing their child’s responses. The present study examined whether caregivers’ autonomy support varied depending on their motivation to gather information during discussion of an unfamiliar activity.

Preschool-aged children (N = 115, Mage = 53.5 months) engaged in a scripted play activity. Caregivers, who were naïve to the activity details, then discussed the activity with their child, either with the goal of gathering facts about what happened (Fact condition; n = 58) or having fun during the conversation (Fun condition; n = 57). In line with previous research, each caregiver sentence was scored as 1=supportive (e.g., confirmed the child, added/requested information about the child’s topic of interest), 2=neutral (e.g., repeated the child, neutral statement) or 3=controlling (e.g., contradicted the child, switched the conversation topic, ignored the child’s most recent statement). An overall autonomy score was calculated for each caregiver by averaging across the entire transcript, with a higher score indicating the caregiver was less supportive and more controlling. We predicted that caregivers assigned to the Fact condition would provide less autonomy support (i.e., more controlling narrative behavior) relative to caregivers in the Fun condition.

Our hypothesis was supported. A t-test indicated that caregivers in the Fact condition had significantly higher scores (M = 1.81, SD = 0.28), indicating lower autonomy support, relative to caregivers in the Fun condition (M = 1.69, SD = 0.19), t(113) = 2.68, p = .008, Cohen’s d = 0.5. These results suggest that caregivers are more controlling, and thus less supportive of children’s narrative autonomy, when they are motivated to gather factual information about an event, even when they are naïve about what actually occurred. In accordance with self-determination theory, this lack of narrative autonomy may actually decrease children’s interest in discussing an event. Future research should examine how adults naturally attempt to control children’s reports of their real-world experiences in high stakes contexts where factual content is a priority (e.g. bullying, maltreatment), given the potential implications of these findings for children’s disclosures of adverse experiences.

Authors

• Emily Slonecker, Cabrini University
  Presenting Author

• J. Zoe Klemfuss, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author