Maternal Elaborative Reminiscing Research Articles

The Development of Children’s Autobiographical and Deliberate Memory Through Mother–Child Reminiscing

ABSTRACT Children’s use of appropriate techniques for remembering and the effectiveness of deliberate strategies improve throughout elementary school. However, relatively little is known about the contextual factors that may play a role in the development of these skills as children enter formal school. Building upon findings from the mother – child reminiscing literature, the current study was designed to examine concurrent and longitudinal associations between maternal elaborative reminiscing style, children’s autobiographical memory, and children's deliberate memory skills. Fifty-one children entering kindergarten, drawn from three schools in the Southeastern region of the United States, were assessed with a battery that included tasks for measuring autobiographical memory and deliberate memory. In a parent – child reminiscing task , parent – child dyads discussed two jointly-experienced events, and parents were categorized as higher or lower in their elaborative reminiscing style. The results reveal an association between parents’ reminiscing style and their children’s performance on the Free Recall with Organizational Training Task , in which both spontaneous and trained strategy use and recall are measured. Although elaborative reminiscing style was not associated with children’s spontaneous strategy use or recall performance at school entry, children with higher elaborative mothers displayed higher levels of strategy use and recall scores after training than did children with lower elaborative mothers. These findings highlight linkages between parents’ elaborative style and children’s uptake and successful use of strategic organizational training, underscoring the role that parent – child reminiscing conversations play in the socialization of cognition.

Growing Memories: Coaching mothers in elaborative reminiscing with toddlers benefits adolescents' turning-point narratives and wellbeing.

Parental elaborative reminiscing supports young children's autobiographical memory, narrative, and socioemotional skills. This study is an adolescent follow-up of a reminiscing intervention in which 115 primary-caregiver mothers of toddlers were randomly assigned to a control group (n=59) or to receive training in elaborative reminiscing (n=56) for the next year. At age 15, 93 of the now-adolescents (81%) were invited to narrate a turning point in their lives and to report on their personality traits and well-being. Turning-point narratives were coded for causal coherence (connections between past events and present self) and thematic coherence (elaboration and resolutions). Adolescents whose mothers were in the intervention group told more causally coherent turning-point narratives and reported fewer emotional problems than control participants, covarying for baseline measures and personality traits. Maternal elaborative reminiscing in early childhood appears to have long-term benefits for adolescents' causal coherence in turning-point narratives and well-being.

Examining Maternal Elaborative Reminiscing as a Protective Factor in the Intergenerational Transmission of Psychopathology.

Most research examining the impact of early parental depression on the developing child has focused on the nature of parenting practices observed in depressed adults. Maternal elaborative reminiscing, or the extent to which mothers elaboratively discuss past shared experiences with their children, has a considerable influence on children's emotional and social development and is understudied within the context of maternal depression. The current study is the first to examine whether maternal elaborative reminiscing in middle childhood mediates the association between exposure to maternal depressive symptoms in infancy and later internalizing and externalizing problems. The study included 206 mother-child dyads recruited from the community who participated in a prospective longitudinal study. Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed when offspring were 6-months old. At 5-years old, dyads were observed during a free play task to measure sensitive and harsh-intrusive parenting and during a reminiscing task to measure maternal elaboration. Teacher-reported internalizing and externalizing problems were collected at age 7. A saturated path model revealed that maternal elaborative reminiscing, but not sensitive or harsh-intrusive parenting, fully mediated the association between maternal depression in infancy and externalizing, but not internalizing, problems. Reduced maternal elaboration during parent-child reminiscing constitutes one way in which risk from early maternal depression is associated with later externalizing problems.

Longitudinal effects of maltreatment, intimate partner violence, and Reminiscing and Emotion Training on children's diurnal cortisol regulation.

Dysregulation in children's physiological stress systems is a key process linking early adversity to poor health and psychopathology. Thus, interventions that improve children's stress physiology may help prevent deleterious health outcomes. Reminiscing and Emotion Training (RET) is a brief relational intervention designed to improve maternal caregiving support by enhancing maltreating mothers' capacity to reminisce with their young children. This study evaluated associations between maltreatment, intimate partner violence, and the RET intervention with changes in children's diurnal cortisol regulation across the 1 year following the intervention, and the extent to which improvements in maternal elaborative reminiscing differed between intervention groups and mediated change in children's physiological functioning. Participants were 237 children (aged 36 to 86 months) and their mothers. Results indicated that the RET intervention was associated with significant positive change in elaborative reminiscing, which was sustained over time. Mothers' elaboration immediately after the intervention served as a mediator of RET's effects on improvements in children's diurnal cortisol regulation (steeper diurnal slopes) from baseline to 1 year following intervention. This suggests RET is effective in facilitating physiological regulation among maltreated children.

Maternal Reminiscing Is Associated With Preschoolers' Reports of Maltreatment During Forensic Interviews.

Children's reports during forensic interviews regarding maltreatment allegations are often critical for legal processes and for guiding decisions regarding services for children and their families. Field research examining forensic interviews with children has identified a wide range in the amount of information children report to interviewers. Research examining associations between children's forensic reports and their broader ecological and developmental contexts related to autobiographical memory would critically contribute to our understanding of children's reports of trauma during forensic investigations. Guided by the sociocultural theory of autobiographical memory development and a self-determination perspective of interviewing child witnesses, associations between the number of allegation-relevant details reported by 52 preschoolers (M = 4.59 years old, SD = 1.06) during forensic interviews concerning substantiated maltreatment allegations and later maternal elaborative and autonomy supportive reminiscing from observations of mother-child interactions during a laboratory assessment were examined. Consistent with previous research regarding children's autobiographical memory, a positive association between maternal elaborative reminiscing about everyday experiences with their children and the number of unique allegation-relevant details children reported during forensic interviews was observed, but only when mothers reminisced with their children in an autonomy supportive manner. Theoretical and practical implications for interviewing child witnesses are discussed.

Elaborative Reminiscing and Child Receptive Language in the Context of Maltreatment: The Moderating Role of Maternal Sensitivity.

This study investigated whether the effect of maternal elaborative reminiscing on child language is moderated by maternal sensitivity and whether this association depends on children's experience of maltreatment. A total of 236 mothers and their 3- to 7-year-old children (mean age = 5 years) were observed interacting with experimenter-provided toys in the lab and at home, and maternal sensitivity was coded from these interactions. Of that, 155 of the children had a history of maltreatment with the mother being named a perpetrator, and the remaining dyads were demographically matched with no history of maltreatment. Dyads were also asked to discuss four past emotional events, and these conversations were coded for maternal elaborative reminiscing. Children and mothers participated in an assessment of receptive language. Findings revealed an unqualified positive main effect of elaborative reminiscing on children's receptive language in the nonmaltreating families. However, for maltreated children, elaborative reminiscing was only associated with higher child receptive language when mothers were also more sensitive. These findings indicate that, in the context of maltreatment, both elaborative reminiscing and more general aspects of the quality of the parent-child relationship are important for facilitating child receptive language.

Maternal reminiscing and child autobiographical memory elaboration: A meta-analytic review.

Significant research has investigated the relationship between mother-child reminiscing and children's autobiographical memory development. It has been suggested that mothers who adopt a high elaborative reminiscing style tend to have children who provide greater memory elaboration during joint reminiscing, yet the empirical findings are somewhat mixed. To address this issue, a systematic review and meta-analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between maternal elaborative reminiscing and child autobiographical memory elaboration. Thirty-four cross-sectional and longitudinal studies from peer-reviewed journals and published dissertations were included in the review. Of those, 31 studies had available data for meta-analytic analyses of the maternal reminiscing variables identified in the review. Findings from this study provided strong evidence indicating that high elaborative maternal reminiscing was associated with children's ability to provide greater detailed personal memory, both concurrently and longitudinally. Among maternal elaborative reminiscing elements identified, mothers' open-ended elaboration and positive evaluation were found to be most related to child memory elaboration. More research is needed to identify the effects of sociocultural contexts on the relationship between maternal elaborative reminiscing and child memory elaboration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Maternal Elaborative Language in Shared Emotion Talk with ODD Children: Relationship to Child Emotion Competencies.

While maternal elaborative reminiscing has been found to be positively connected to children's emotion competencies, little is known about how the quality of maternal talk during mother-child talk about shared emotion events relates to emotional competencies in children with disruptive behavioural disorders. In this study of 68 four to eight year-olds with oppositional defiant disorder and 34 children without a diagnosis there was no evidence of differences between mothers of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) children and mothers of non-ODD children in their use of emotion descriptors and open-ended questions when discussing emotion events with their child. After controlling for child age, gender, expressive verbal abilities and number of conversational turns, the more the mothers used these devices the poorer child's ability to generate causes for emotions and the lower the child's emotion regulation ability. The association for child emotion regulation was moderated by child's diagnostic status with a notable relationship for ODD mother-child dyads but not for the other group. The implications of the findings for the conceptualisation of mother-child talk and its relationship to the development of emotion competencies in children with disruptive behavioural problems are discussed.

Investigating whether maternal memory specificity is indirectly associated with child memory specificity through maternal reminiscing

ABSTRACTMaternal reminiscing and remembering has a profound influence on the development of children’s autobiographical remembering skills. The current study investigated the relationships between maternal memory specificity, maternal reminiscing and child memory specificity. Participants consisted of 40 mother–child dyads. Children’s age ranged between 3.5 and 6 years. Mothers and children participated in individual assessments of autobiographical memory specificity. Dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about three past emotional (happy, sad, stressful) events. A positive moderate association was found between maternal autobiographical memory specificity and child autobiographical memory specificity. Maternal autobiographical memory specificity was significantly correlated with mothers’ focus on the task, involvement and reciprocity, resolution of negative feelings, and structuring of narratives in the mother–child reminiscing task. Moderate positive associations were found between maternal focus and structuring and child memory specificity. There was no evidence to suggest maternal elaborative reminiscing style was significantly positively correlated with mother or child memory specificity. Finally, there was support for an indirect pathway between maternal memory specificity and child memory specificity through quality of support and guidance provided by the mother in maternal reminiscing. Theoretical and clinical implications are considered.

Maternal attachment is differentially associated with mother–child reminiscing among maltreating and nonmaltreating families

In the current investigation, we examined associations between maternal attachment and the way that mothers and children discuss past emotional experiences (i.e., reminiscing) among 146 maltreating and 73 nonmaltreating mothers and their 3- to 6-year-old children. Recent studies demonstrate that maltreating mothers engage in less elaborative reminiscing compared with nonmaltreating mothers. To further explicate the nature of reminiscing among maltreating families, we examined maternal and child contributions to reminiscing, their interrelations, and associations with maternal attachment among dyads from maltreating and nonmaltreating families. Maternal attachment is theoretically and empirically associated with mother–child reminiscing, and an insecure maternal attachment style was hypothesized to exacerbate poor elaborative reminiscing among maltreating families. Mothers and children reminisced about four emotional experiences. Maternal attachment was measured with the Experience in Close Relationships–Revised questionnaire. Mothers and children from maltreating families engaged in less elaborative and emotion-rich reminiscing compared with nonmaltreating dyads. Maternal attachment anxiety was negatively associated with maternal elaborative reminiscing, but only among nonmaltreating mothers. Mother–child reminiscing among dyads with nonmaltreating and low attachment anxiety mothers was highly collaborative; whereas reminiscing among dyads with maltreating and high attachment anxiety mothers was less reciprocal. Our findings largely support communicative perspectives of attachment theory and also indicate that maternal attachment is differentially associated with mother–child reminiscing among maltreating and nonmaltreating families.

Maternal elaborative reminiscing mediates the effect of child maltreatment on behavioral and physiological functioning.

Theoretical and empirical evidence suggest that the way in which parents discuss everyday emotional experiences with their young children (i.e., elaborative reminiscing) has significant implications for child cognitive and socioemotional functioning, and that maltreating parents have a particularly difficult time in engaging in this type of dialogue. This dyadic interactional exchange, therefore, has the potential to be an important process variable linking child maltreatment to developmental outcomes at multiple levels of analysis. The current investigation evaluated the role of maternal elaborative reminiscing in associations between maltreatment and child cognitive, emotional, and physiological functioning. Participants included 43 maltreated and 49 nonmaltreated children (aged 3-6) and their mothers. Dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about four past emotional events, and children participated in assessments of receptive language and emotion knowledge. Child salivary cortisol was also collected from children three times a day (waking, midday, and bedtime) on 2 consecutive days to assess daily levels and diurnal decline. Results indicated that maltreating mothers engaged in significantly less elaborative reminiscing than did nonmaltreating mothers. Maternal elaborative reminiscing mediated associations between child maltreatment and child receptive language and child emotion knowledge. In addition, there was support for an indirect pathway between child maltreatment and child cortisol diurnal decline through maternal elaborative reminiscing. Directions for future research are discussed, and potential clinical implications are addressed.

Socialization of past event talk: Cultural differences in maternal elaborative reminiscing

This study examines mother–child reminiscing conversations with respect to variation in use and function of mothers’ elaborations, the nature of children's memory elaborations, and the connections between the two, in three Western middle-class cultures where autonomy is valued over relatedness. Mothers participated with their 4-year-old children (35 dyads from Berlin, Germany, 42 dyads from Stockholm, Sweden, and 38 from Tallinn, Estonia). Mothers’ open-ended questions predicted children's memory elaborations in Estonian dyads, mothers’ statements and verbal confirmation did so in German dyads, and verbal confirmations did so in Swedish dyads. Number of children's elaborations was similar in all three groups, but Estonian mothers were less elaborative than Swedish and German mothers. These findings contrast with previous research in which number of child elaborations has been linked to number of mother elaborations. The results suggest that different aspects of elaborative style function differently. The differences are discussed in light of culturally rooted meanings and practices of talking.

Maternal Elaborative Reminiscing Increases Low-Income Children's Narrative Skills Relative to Dialogic Reading

Research Findings: This study compared the unique effects of training low-income mothers in dialogic reading versus elaborative reminiscing on children's oral language and emergent literacy. Thirty-three low-income parents of 4-year-old children attending Head Start were randomly assigned to either dialogic reading, elaborative reminiscing, or a control condition. Parents in the intervention conditions were trained to implement specific and prescribed conversational techniques. Children's vocabulary, narrative, and print skills were assessed at the beginning (pretest) and at the end (posttest) of the school year. Elaborative reminiscing boosted the quality of children's narratives in comparison to dialogic reading. Elaborative reminiscing was also effective in supporting children's story comprehension. These training effects were present regardless of the children's ethnic background and whether they were bilingual. Practice: Training parents in elaborative reminiscing is a promising alternative to training in shared book reading for enhancing children's narrative development in non-mainstream populations. Parent training programs in elaborative reminiscing may also complement dialogic reading programs that take place in preschool classrooms.

“Remember When You Got The Big, Big Bulldozer?” Mother–Child Reminiscing Over Time and Across Cultures

This study investigated the long–term contribution of maternal elaborative reminiscing to children's development of autobiographical memory ability in a cross–cultural context. Preschool–age children and their mothers from Chinese families in China, first–generation immigrant Chinese families in the U.S., and European American families participated. Mothers and children discussed shared past experiences three times at home, when children were 3, 3.5, and 4.5 years of age. Across all time points, Euro–American mothers used a more elaborative style than the mothers of both Chinese groups, and Euro–American children reported more memory information than their Chinese peers. Maternal elaborative reminiscing was positively associated with mothers' value orientation toward independence (relative to interdependence) and an autonomous self–construal. Regardless of culture, mothers' use of elaborations showed both concurrent and long–term effects on children's memory responding. Findings are discussed in light of ...