Learning Through Parent-Child Conversations in Diverse Contexts

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Parent-child conversations are a vital medium for socialization. During these conversations, what parents talk about and how they engage their children hold important implications for cognitive, social and emotional development. Critically, such conversations do not take place in vacuum, but are situated within diverse contexts under specific cultural and socio-historical conditions. Predominant values and beliefs in the larger culture and society shape parental socialization goals and practices and, in turn, children’s developmental outcomes. Thus, parent-child conversations need to be examined within the contexts in which they are situated to reveal their impact on development. This symposium consists of four presentations that take situated approaches to examine parent-child conversations and the related cognitive, social, and emotional skills in children. The first presentation investigates caregivers’ autonomy-support as a function of different goals for seeking truth or having fun in conversations with their preschool-aged children and the consequences for children’s memory performance. The second presentation investigates how European- and Chinese-American parents and their preschool-aged children teach and learn about the physical and social world through asking questions. The third presentation examines mother-child conversations about the school-aged children’s future experiences in European-American and Chinese immigrant families and the implications for the development of an extended self. The fourth presentation examines emotional reminiscing between mothers and their preschool-aged children in the context of maternal depression and the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to children’s socio-emotional functioning. Collectively, these presentations underscore the dynamic characteristics of parent-child conversations in shaping child development in diverse contexts.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chairs

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

• Qi Wang, Cornell University

Individual Presentations

• Caregiver Autonomy Support and Conversation Context Predict Children’s Memory Performance - Presenting Author: Emily Slonecker, Cabrini University; J. Zoe Klemfuss, University of California - Irvine

• How Questions Drive Teaching and Learning in European-American and Chinese-American Parent-Child Interactions - Presenting Author: Ran Wei, Harvard Medical School; Jin Li, Brown University; Megan Mengyuan Wang, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Yoko Yamamoto, Brown University

• Narrative Structure in European-American and Chinese Immigrant Mother-Child Future Talk - Presenting Author: Jessie Bee Kim Koh, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; Tong Wu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; Yan Jin, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; Yue Li, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; Qi Wang, Cornell University

• Maternal Depression and Mother-Child Reminiscing of Emotional Events during the Pandemic - Presenting Author: Xin Feng, The Ohio State University; Meingold Hiu-Ming Chan, University of British Columbia (UBC); Karis Inboden, Ohio State University; Yihui Gong, Ohio State University; Qi Wang, Cornell University