Mother-child Conversations Research Articles

Mother-Child Conversations about the Impact of Nutrition and Activities on a Short and Long-Term Basis

The following two studies examined mother-child conversations about the outcomes of engaging in healthy and unhealthy eating and physically active and sedentary activities. Study 1 (n= 29 mother-child dyads, M age = 4.6 years) examined the impact of healthy and unhealthy eating on a short and on a long term basis. Study 2 (n = 34 mother-child dyads, M age = 4 years 8 months) examined the impact of physically active and sedentary activities on a short and on a long term basis. Overall for Study 1, preschoolers elicited significantly more physiological and physical responses. For Study 2, preschoolers gave significantly more physiological and physical utterances than their mothers did. The results of these two studies demonstrate that preschoolers draw predominantly on the biological domain when reasoning about the impact of engaging in healthy/unhealthy nutrition and physically active and sedentary activities on a short and on a long-term basis.

Unveiling the tapestry of mother–child interactions through text mining and sentiment analysis

The interaction between a mother and child stands as one of the most profound and intricate human connections, weaving a rich tapestry of behavioral and emotional bonds during the formative years. Although mother–child interactions have received substantial attention in the developmental science literature, few studies have tapped into the extensive corpus of speech data available to uncover the nuances of these interactions across developmental stages. This study applied text mining and sentiment analysis on narratives extracted from mother–child conversations to identify the developmental trend of mother–child interactions from early to middle childhood. The results, based on three key areas of dyadic interactions, demonstrated a shift toward more balanced turn-taking dynamics and linguistic congruence as children age. Also, there was a significant interdependence of mother and child expressed emotions across time. Further investigation of the dyadic emotionality revealed a nonlinear effect of mother-expressed emotion on child-expressed emotion: mother-expressed negative emotions followed a cubic-like pattern, while positive emotions followed a mild quadratic trend. Taken together, the findings of this study present a picture of progressive augmentation of mother–child synchrony over time.

The moderating role of gender and acculturative status in the socialization of cultural values in U.S. Mexican families.

Familismo and respeto are traditional Latine values often taught to U.S. Latine children by their caregivers. Deference to authority figures and restraint from defiance to such figures are also taught. Despite the central role of these as markers of Latine ethnic identity and their relevance to children's health and well-being, little is known on how these traditional cultural values are socialized and whether differences exist in these values between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking U.S. Latine mothers and between boys and girls. We examined expressions of familismo, respeto, deference, and defiance in conversations of low-income, U.S. Mexican mothers and their children as a function of mothers' acculturative status and children's gender. One hundred thirty-eight video-recorded U.S. Mexican mother-child conversations (65 girls; age: M = 10.5 years, SD = 0.53) were transcribed and coded to obtain indices of respeto, familismo, deference, and defiance. There were 70 Spanish-speaking mothers and 68 English-speaking mothers (age: M = 34.9 years, SD = 5.8) from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation project. Spanish-speaking children were more deferent than English-speaking children. English-speaking children were more defiant. There were no group differences, however, in familism and respect. The findings advance a more nuanced conceptual framework of cultural values socialization that is sensitive to acculturative status in U.S. Latine populations and can inform the development of effective intervention efforts (e.g., parenting education programs) aimed at supporting enculturative practices that can enhance U.S. Latine children's health and well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Promoting Critical Media Literacy in Bilingual Households Through Mother-Child Conversations About Gender: A Multiple Case Study

ABSTRACT This qualitative case study explores the intersection of family literacy, bilingualism, and critical media literacy by examining how mother-child conversations about children’s videos helped preschool, bilingual children develop critical perspectives on gender roles. As part of a larger qualitative study, this study focused on 4-year-old, Korean-descent children’s conversations with their mothers about gender representations in children’s videos as well as in their drawing. The data were collected over three months through multiple sources, including observations, interviews, and children’s artifacts. The findings of this study suggest that critical media literacy practices can be used in bilingual households as a tool to enrich family literacy environments in which mother and child explore gender representations in children’s media in an interactive and critical way.

Mother–Child Conversations of Latina Immigrant and U.S.-Born Mothers in the United States

The present study examined heritage culture influences on the roles of adult and child in the conversations Latina immigrant mothers in the United States have with their young children. Spanish monolingual Latina mothers ( n = 17), Spanish-English bilingual Latina mothers ( n = 30), and English monolingual European American mothers ( n = 22) were recorded in toy play interaction with their 2.5-year-old children; the bilingual Latina mothers were recorded twice, once interacting in Spanish and once in English. Analyses of transcripts of those conversations revealed that the monolingual Spanish-speaking Latina mothers talked more and asked fewer questions of their children and their children talked less compared with the monolingual English-speaking European American mothers and their children, consistent with differences that have been observed between mothers in Latin America and in the United States. The Spanish and English conversations between the bilingual mothers and their children similarly differed in the ratio of adult to child speech, although the Latina mothers’ English conversations still differed from the English conversations of European American mothers. In addition, the ratio of mother to child speech in the immigrant mothers’ Spanish language conversations declined as their years of U.S. residence increased. These findings argue that children of Latina immigrant mothers in the United States are socialized to talk less (and listen more) in conversation with adults compared with children from European American families. These findings also provide new evidence for cultural frames as the mediators of cultural influences on behavior and for language priming of cultural frames.

Assessing Maternal Attitudes: Development, Validation, and Psychometric Properties of the Mother-Child Reminiscing Scales.

Mother-child participation in conversations about past events in early childhood has an invaluable influence on child development. While previous studies have focused on the investigation of maternal styles of talking about the past, the role of maternal attitudes towards reminiscing has been overlooked. This paper presents two studies on the development and validation of two separate scales that assess maternal attitudes in mother-child conversations: the Maternal Attitudes Towards Mother-Child Reminiscing Scale (MCRS) and MCRS-Context. In Study 1, we have investigated the factor structure of the MCRS (N = 312) and MCRS-Context (N = 278) with a sample of mothers whose children aged between 3 and 7. In Study 2, we aimed to test the factor structure obtained by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) in Study 1 using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and we have investigated the psychometric properties of the scales with a different sample of 223 mothers. EFA and CFA results have suggested four theoretically consistent factors of the MCRS (interest, competency, satisfaction and difficulty) and a one-factor structure for the MCRS-Context (general positive attitudes in comparison to other mothers). To test construct validity, the relationships with related independent scales were investigated, indicating generally significant and theoretically expected correlations. The test/re-test, Cronbach alpha and composite reliability scores indicated acceptable internal consistency for both scales. The findings of both studies provided evidence for the validity and reliability of these scales in evaluating maternal attitudes towards mother-child conversations. It is thought that the studies presented here will provide useful insight for future studies for understanding the link between maternal cognitions and reminiscing practices in mother-child conversations and the effect of that link on child development.

Understanding Maternal Rewards and Their Subtypes between Gender and Culture with Adolescents

Abstract The effects of parent rewards on youth outcomes have been studied extensively; however, research has not systematically categorized parent rewards. Centralizing the analysis of rewards within a given study would help compare the prevalence of reward types at superordinate and subordinate levels. Moreover, it could reveal which level is the most effective for assessing cultural group similarities and differences in a globalizing world. Mother-child conversations between European-American (n = 51) and Hispanic-American (n = 44) dyads were transcribed. A content analysis assessed material and social reward talk themes and created new subthemes. A series of 2 (culture) × 2 (gender) ANCOVAs assessed cultural differences in reward talk themes and subthemes. Results revealed the prevalence of certain reward subthemes, like praise, significantly differed by cultural group. In conclusion, investigations with different cultural groups should consider reward talk on a subordinate level rather than superordinate.

Концептуальные основы становления языковой социализации за рубежом

<p>The article provides an analysis of the conceptual foundations of the formation of linguistic socialization in the 20th century. Special attention is paid by the authors to the study of the pragmatics of the development of Elinor Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin, which became the basis for the emergence of linguistic socialization, exploring how children perceive and act out the «context of the situation» in relation to the «context of culture». The authors described the existing relationships between linguistic socialization and language acquisition, linguistics and anthropology. It was revealed that linguistic socialization combines discursive and ethnographic methods that fix social structures and cultural interpretations of semiotic forms, practices that allow children to properly build interaction in society in the future. The authors conclude that studies devoted to the process of language acquisition prioritise the mother-child conversation as the object of study, while studies of language socialization extend it to the range of communicative partners — adults and children — with whom the child or other new community member typically interacts to some degree in socioculturally configured settings.</p>

A constructivist perspective on mother–child conversations and children’s eyewitness memory.

A constructivist perspective on mother–child conversations and children’s eyewitness memory.

Maternal maltreatment as a context for mother–child conversations and children’s reports of experienced and nonexperienced abuse.

Maternal maltreatment as a context for mother–child conversations and children’s reports of experienced and nonexperienced abuse.

Familism values embedded in U.S. Mexican mother-child conversations about sibling conflicts

The current study focused on familism-related content that emerged in a primarily qualitative analysis of U.S. Mexican mother-child conversations about sibling conflicts ( Mage = 10.55; English = 43 (24 female); Spanish = 43 (19 female)). The study’s goals were to (1) describe how familism, a central Latinx value, is conveyed to children in late middle childhood, (2) uncover signs that children at this age actively or passively accept or reject mothers’ observations and expectations, and (3) determine if there are differences in conversation content based on language preference, child gender, or birth order. During discussions about sibling conflict, mothers’ and children’s comments revolved around four pillars of familism: establishing and maintaining harmony and devotion, recognizing the specialness of family ties (in this case sibling ties), accepting role obligations, and developing other-orientation. These values were expressed more implicitly than explicitly by a majority of the dyads. Most children accepted at least some of mothers’ statements, but resistance was also high. Chi-square tests indicated no gender-of-child or birth order differences in the content of the discussions, but dyads who spoke Spanish during the conversations were more likely than those who spoke English to speak in explicit familistic terms and to point to the specialness of the sibling tie. Our study is strengths-based as we demonstrate that in U.S. Mexican families, children’s conflicts with their siblings may serve as catalysts for “teaching moments” during which parents impart culturally relevant values.

Referent accessibility and referential choice in Mandarin mother–child conversation: The incremental effect of accessibility

This study investigated whether the referential choices made by Mandarin-speaking children and mothers were related to referent accessibility, in particular, to theincrementaleffect of accessibility. Two hypotheses were tested. First, it was hypothesized that both the children and the mothers would show sensitivity to the incrementaleffect of accessibility in their referential choices. Second, it was hypothesized that the children would be less informative than their mothers in their referential choices. Eight hours of Mandarin-speaking mother–child (2;2–3;1) conversation data were analyzed in terms of three types of referential forms and nine categories of accessibility features. In addition, analysis was conducted to determine the accessibility value for each referent and to examine the distribution of referential forms in relation to accessibility values. It was found that the children’s and mothers’ referential choices reflected the incremental effect of accessibility, which supported the first hypothesis. It was also evidenced that the children used more null forms and less nominal and pronominal forms than their mothers did for referents with the same degree of accessibility, which confirmed the second hypothesis. The findings of the study were further discussed in relation to children’s linguistic and cognitive development and the characteristics of mother–child interaction.

Relationships Between Mother-Child Conversations About Emotion and Socioemotional Development of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Mother-child emotion-related conversations, as a practice of parental socialization of emotion, can help children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) develop socio-emotional skills. This study intends to explore relationships between mother-child conversations about emotions and socio-emotional skills of children with ASD by accounting for the moderating role of children personality traits and mothers' emotional openness. Mothers of children with ASD (n = 49) responded to five questionnaires describing their conversations about emotions, emotional openness as well as their child's socio-emotional skills and personality. We conducted hierarchical regression and moderation analyses. Our findings indicate that frequent mother-child conversations about emotions significantly predict higher emotional regulation and Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities in children with ASD (p < 0.05). Moreover, children's consciousness and openness to experience, along with mothers' emotional openness significantly moderate the relation between mother-child conversations about emotions and children's ToM skills (p < 0.05). Mother-child conversations about emotions, as a practice of parental socialization of emotion, could be beneficial for children with ASD. Children's personality traits and mothers' openness to emotion may act as a protective factor of ToM skills in children with ASD.

Contingent experience with touchscreens promotes parent-child conversations

Touchscreen devices are characterized as contingent interactive media because they respond synchronously to touch behaviors. This study examined the quantity of parent-child conversations in which 2-year-olds (24–26 months) and their mothers played a game application on a touchscreen. Both mothers and children talked more often when the touchscreen provided contingency for their touches. Furthermore, the numbers of maternal and child utterances were related when playing with contingent touches but not with non-contingent touches or when viewing the screen without touching it. These findings suggest that contingent experiences with touchscreen devices improve the quantity of mother-child conversations. Our study envisions the potential of touchscreens in a communication tool for parent-child interactions.

Maternal Use of Decontextualized and Contextualized Talk: An In-Depth Investigation of Early Parent-Child Interactions in Down Syndrome.

Purpose The goal of this study was to characterize and quantify maternal use of decontextualized and contextualized input during mother-child interactions including young children with Down syndrome (DS). Method Participants included 22 mother-child dyads with DS (M age = 42.8 months) and 22 mother-child dyads with typical development (M age = 44.0 months). Parent-child language samples were collected during free-play, book reading, and snack time, and coded for maternal decontextualized (i.e., pretend, explanatory, and narrative talk) and contextualized input (i.e., descriptions, conversation, praise, questions, and directives). Results Mothers of children with DS used a larger proportion of pretend talk compared to other types of decontextualized input and also used a larger proportion of questions, conversation, and descriptions compared to other types of contextualized language. Mothers of children with DS generally used a smaller proportion of decontextualized input compared to mothers of children with typical development, with the exception of pretend talk. Maternal decontextualized input was not related to children's age or language ability in DS. Conclusions Findings shed new light on the early language environments of children with DS, providing important insight into the ways that mothers of children with DS are incorporating decontextualized and contextualized talk into early mother-child conversations. Additional implications and future directions are discussed.

Gender Differences in Mother-Child Conversations About Shame and Pride in a Hungarian Sample.

Although meta-analytic reviews repeatedly found significant gender differences in the experiences of shame and pride throughout the life span, to date, gender differences in conversations about these emotions have not been studied. Our research was aimed at investigating the effect of child gender on maternal conversational style in and emotional content of mother-child conversations about shame- and pride-related past events in preschool years. Fifty four mother—preschool child dyads (52% girls, children’s age M = 70.36 months [SD = 8.13], mothers’ age M = 37.51 years [SD = 3.70]) from middle class Hungarian families were asked to talk about two past events, one in which children felt ashamed, and one in which they felt proud. The conversations were transcribed and coded for maternal conversational style and for emotional content. Maternal conversational style was indicated by maternal elaboration and evaluation of the child’s contributions. Emotional content was indicated by specific emotion terms, emotional behavior and emotional evaluations. In mother-son shame conversations, we found higher amount of negative emotional behavior. Boys also had longer conversations with their mothers, and mothers used more open-ended memory questions and more repetitions with boys in both shame and pride conversations. Girls had shorter contributions to pride stories than to shame stories, which was not the case for boys. Exploration of verbal socialization of shame and pride helps us to understand the development of individual differences in proneness to self-conscious emotions, and their implications for mental health.

Reminiscing and Autobiographical Memory in ASD: Mother-Child Conversations About Emotional Events and How Preschool-Aged Children Recall the Past.

Autobiographical memory (AM) is a socially-relevant cognitive skill. Little is known regarding AM during early childhood in ASD. Parent-child reminiscing conversations predict AM in non-ASD populations but have rarely been examined in autism. To address this gap, 17 preschool-aged children (ages 4-6years) with ASD and 21 children without ASD matched on age, sex, and expressive language completed assessments of AM, executive functioning, self-related variables, and a parent-child reminiscing task. Children with ASD had less specific AM, which related to theory of mind, self-concept, and working memory. AM specificity also related to child observed autism traits. Mothers of children with ASD made more closed-ended and off-topic utterances during reminiscing, although only maternal open-ended elaborations predicted better AM in ASD.

Culture at work: European American and Taiwanese parental socialization of children’s learning

In this article, we highlight three assumptions about culture that guide our research: (1) culture is lived but often implicitly; (2) philosophical origins illuminate cultural core values in the here and now; and (3) cultures differ. We focus on learning both in European-heritage and in Confucian-heritage cultures. To address the central question “how does the cultural become the personal?” we take three steps. First, we explain the importance of each assumption and the relations between them. Next, we trace the philosophical origins of which establish the foundations of core cultural values for two sets of cultures, European-heritage and Confucian-heritage cultures. We then present empirical research that illustrate sociocultural learning models (SCLMs) in the two sets of cultures. Finally, we discuss the notions of joint intentionality and intersubjectivity as the process by which parents draw on a given SCLM to socialize their young, which is how the cultural becomes the personal. We use discourse analysis of two segments of mother-child conversations, (one European American and one Taiwanese), to demonstrate culture at work. Our detailed analysis reveals the cultural embeddedness of daily living that otherwise remains implicit. We conclude with applied implications of our theory and research for childrearing and human learning.

Neural synchrony in mother-child conversation: Exploring the role of conversation patterns.

Conversations are an essential form of communication in daily family life. Specific patterns of caregiver–child conversations have been linked to children’s socio-cognitive development and child-relationship quality beyond the immediate family environment. Recently, interpersonal neural synchronization has been proposed as a neural mechanism supporting conversation. Here, we present a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning study looking at the temporal dynamics of neural synchrony during mother–child conversation. Preschoolers (20 boys and 20 girls, M age 5;07 years) and their mothers (M age 36.37 years) were tested simultaneously with fNIRS hyperscanning while engaging in a free verbal conversation lasting for 4 min. Neural synchrony (using wavelet transform coherence analysis) was assessed over time. Furthermore, each conversational turn was coded for conversation patterns comprising turn-taking, relevance, contingency and intrusiveness. Results from linear mixed-effects modeling revealed that turn-taking, but not relevance, contingency or intrusiveness predicted neural synchronization during the conversation over time. Results are discussed to point out possible variables affecting parent–child conversation quality and the potential functional role of interpersonal neural synchronization for parent–child conversation.

청소년 자녀와 어머니의 진로대화 상호작용 연계분석

청소년 자녀와 어머니의 진로대화 상호작용 연계분석