Socialization of Pain Memories: Parent-Child Reminiscing About Past Painful and Sad Events.

Maria Pavlova,Jill Chorney,Nivez Rasic,Monica Hoy,Jillian Vinall,Warren K Yunker,Abbie Jordan,Melanie Noel,James Brookes,Susan A Graham

doi:10.1093/jpepsy/jsz009

Abstract

Parent-child reminiscing about past negative events has been linked to a host of developmental outcomes. Previous research has identified two distinct between-parent reminiscing styles, wherein parents who are more elaborative (vs. repetitive) have children with more optimal outcomes. To date, however, research has not examined how parents and children talk about past painful experiences nor compared parent-child reminiscing about past painful versus other distressing events despite key developmental differences in how young children respond to pain versus sadness in others. This study aimed to fill that gap. Seventy-eight children aged 4 to 7 years underwent a tonsillectomy. Two weeks postsurgery, children and one of their parents discussed past autobiographical events (i.e., the tonsillectomy, another painful event, a sad event). Parent-child conversations were coded using established coding schemes to capture parental reminiscing style, content, and autonomy support. Findings revealed robust differences in parent-child reminiscing about painful versus sad events. Parents were less elaborative, used less emotionally negative words and explanations, and were less supportive of their children's autonomy while reminiscing about past painful versus sad events. These findings demonstrate that through reminiscing, parents may socialize children about pain in a way that is different from other distressing events (e.g., sadness). Future research should examine the influence of differential reminiscing about pain versus sadness on developmental and health outcomes.

Highlights

Parent–child reminiscing powerfully shapes young children’s cognitive and socioemotional development by creating a foundational learning framework that helps children to process and assign meaning to their past distressing experiences (Nelson & Fivush, 2004)
A large proportion of variance remained unexplained. This raises the possibility that the differences in children’s prosocial responding to pain versus sadness in others may be partially driven by differential socialization of pain versus negative emotions, like sadness, and parent–child interactions. This study addressed this gap by examining the reminiscing style and content across parent–child reminiscing about two painful autobiographical events and a negative emotional autobiographical event
Most children (64%) nominated everyday pain experiences, 12% reminisced about getting a needle, and 7% reminisced about a traumatic injury

Summary

Introduction

Parent–child reminiscing powerfully shapes young children’s cognitive and socioemotional development by creating a foundational learning framework that helps children to process and assign meaning to their past distressing experiences (Nelson & Fivush, 2004). Parent– child conversations about pain, a universal distressing sensory and emotional experience, and past pain, have not been examined. Young children with negatively biased memories for pain (i.e., recall of more pain as compared with initial reports) reported more pain during a future experimental pain task (Noel et al, 2012). Children’s negatively biased pain memories postsurgery have been linked to higher pain at the time that it can transition to a chronic state (Noel, Rabbitts, Fales, Chorney, & Palermo, 2017). These pain memories are thought, in part, to be (re)constructed through parent–child verbal interactions following painful events (Noel, Palermo, Chambers, Taddio, & Hermann, 2015). Research on parent– child reminiscing about painful events is scarce

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