Spanish-Speaking Parent–Child Emotional Narratives and Children's Social Skills

The Protective Effects of Parent-Child Emotion Dialogues for Preschoolers Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) during early childhood is associated with self-regulation difficulties. Caregivers can facilitate children's self-regulation through emotion-focused conversations about past experiences, buffering downstream effects. However, caregivers experiencing violence may avoid distressing emotions activated by such conversations. This paper explores two different models of relational stress responses, one involving indirect effects (i.e. spillover effects) and the other moderation (i.e. buffering effects). Mothers (n = 117), oversampled for violence exposure, self-reported on IPV and participated in an emotional reminiscing task with children (aged 3-5 years); narratives were coded for maternal sensitive guidance. Maternal sensitive guidance was related to children's self-regulation. Sensitive guidance did not have indirect effects in the association between IPV exposure and children's self-regulation, but did buffer the association between physical IPV and self-regulation; this pattern did not hold for psychological IPV. Results suggest sensitive guidance during reminiscing may promote self-regulation in contexts of high IPV.

Gender differences in emotional reminiscing in a Scandinavian sample

Emotional reminiscing is a context where children learn culture-specific ways of understanding past emotional experiences through parentally scaffolded conversations, and learn how to connect these disparate experiences into their developing autobiographical memory. The goal of the present investigation was to explore possible gender differences in emotional reminiscing in an egalitarian cultural context (Denmark). Mothers and fathers from families (N = 88) reminisced about a happy and a sad past event with their 4.5-year-old children. Parents' and children's contributions were coded for emotion words, emotion attributions, and explanations. The emotional content did not differ as a function of parent or child gender. However, Danish children talked more about emotions overall with their mothers compared to their fathers. The results are discussed in light of the socio-cultural practices.

The Socialization of Young Children's Empathy for Pain: The Role of Mother- and Father-Child Reminiscing

OBJECTIVE

Empathy for pain allows one to recognize, understand, and respond to another person's pain in a prosocial manner. Young children develop empathy for pain later than empathy for other negative emotions (e.g., sadness), which may be due to social learning. How parents reminisce with children about past painful events has been linked to children's pain cognitions (e.g., memory) and broader socioemotional development. The present study examined how parent-child reminiscing about pain may be linked to children's empathic behaviors toward another person's pain.

METHODS

One hundred and fourteen 4-year-old children (55% girls) and for each, one parent (51% fathers) completed a structured narrative elicitation task wherein they reminisced about a past painful autobiographical event for the child. Children were then observed responding in a lab-based empathy task wherein they witnessed a confederate pretending to hurt themselves. Children's empathic behaviors and parent-child narratives about past painful events were coded using established coding schemes.

RESULTS

Findings revealed that parents who used more neutral emotion language (e.g., How did you feel?) when discussing past painful events had children who exhibited more empathic concern in response to another's pain. Similarly, children who used more explanations when reminiscing about past painful events displayed more empathic concern about another's pain.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings highlight a key role of parent-child reminiscing about the past pain in the behavioral expression of empathy for pain in young children.

Intergenerational transmission of autobiographical memory specificity: Indirect effects through maternal reminiscing

Mother-child reminiscing, particularly maternal sensitive guidance, fosters the development of autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) in both typically developing and maltreated children, yet little is known regarding the processes underlying individual differences in maternal reminiscing that could also relate to child AMS. Emerging evidence has shown that maternal AMS is associated with maternal sensitive guidance in typically developing dyads. We extended this research to the context of maltreatment, a risk factor for impoverished maternal sensitive guidance and reduced AMS in children. In the current study, we evaluated the indirect effect of maternal AMS on child AMS through two dimensions of maternal reminiscing style-sensitive guidance and elaboration-while including parallel pathways between neglect and abuse/emotional maltreatment and child AMS through maternal reminiscing. Participants were 123 neglecting, 30 abuse/emotional maltreating, and 78 demographically matched nonmaltreating mothers and their 3- to 6-year-old children. Results indicated that maternal AMS was indirectly associated with child AMS through maternal sensitive guidance while controlling for associations among neglect, maternal reminiscing, and child AMS, providing evidence for intergenerational transmission of AMS in at-risk dyads. These results advance the understanding of mechanisms underlying both maternal sensitive guidance and child AMS in a low-socioeconomic-status and racially diverse sample.

Narrative Intervention: Principles to Practice

Purpose

Narrative interventions are a class of language interventions that involve the use of telling or retelling stories. Narrative intervention can be an efficient and versatile means of promoting a large array of academically and socially important language targets that improve children's access to general education curriculum and enhance their peer relations. The purpose of this tutorial is to supply foundational information about the importance of narratives and to offer recommendations about how to maximize the potential of narrative interventions in school-based clinical practice.

Method

Drawing from decades of cognitive and linguistic research, a tutorial on narratives and narrative language is presented first. Ten principles that support the design and implementation of narrative interventions are described.

Results

Clinicians can use narrative intervention to teach story grammar, complex language, vocabulary, inferencing, and social pragmatics. Storytelling, as an active intervention ingredient, promotes the comprehension and production of complex language.

Conclusion

When narrative intervention is implemented following a set of principles drawn from research and extensive clinical experience, speech-language pathologists can efficiently and effectively teach a broad set of academically and socially meaningful skills to diverse students.

The role of narrative in the development of children's pain memories: influences of father- and mother-child reminiscing on children's recall of pain

Negatively biased memories for pain (ie, recalled pain is higher than initial report) robustly predict future pain experiences. During early childhood, parent-child reminiscing has been posited as playing a critical role in how children's memories are constructed and reconstructed; however, this has not been empirically demonstrated. This study examined the role of parent-child reminiscing about a recent painful surgery in young children's pain memory development. Participants included 112 children (Mage = 5.3 years; 60% boys) who underwent a tonsillectomy and one of their parents (34% fathers). Pain was assessed in hospital and during the recovery phase at home. Two weeks after surgery, parents and children attended a laboratory visit to participate in a structured narrative elicitation task wherein they reminisced about the surgery. Four weeks after surgery, children completed an established pain memory interview using the same previously administered scales through telephone. Narratives were coded for style (elaboration) and content (pain and emotion) based on coding schemes drawn from the developmental psychology literature. Findings revealed that a more elaborative parental reminiscing style in addition to greater use of emotional words predicted more accurate/positively biased pain memories. Greater parental use of pain words predicted more negatively biased pain memories. Although there were no sex and parent-role differences in pain memory biases, mothers and fathers differed in how they reminisced with their boys vs girls. This research underscores the importance of parent-child reminiscing in children's pain memory development and may be used to inform the development of a parent-led memory reframing intervention to improve pediatric pain management.

The Role of Language Skill in Child Psychopathology: Implications for Intervention in the Early Years

In this narrative review, we suggest that children's language skill should be targeted in clinical interventions for children with emotional and behavioral difficulties in the preschool years. We propose that language skill predicts childhood emotional and behavioral problems and this relationship may be mediated by children's self-regulation and emotion understanding skills. In the first sections, we review recent high-quality longitudinal studies which together demonstrate that that children's early language skill predicts: (1) emotional and behavioral problems, and this relationship is stronger than the reverse pattern; (2) self-regulation skill; this pattern may be stronger than the reverse pattern but moderated by child age. Findings also suggest that self-regulation skill mediates the relation between early language skill and children's emotional and behavioral problems. There is insufficient evidence regarding the mediating role of emotion understanding. In subsequent sections, we review evidence demonstrating that: (1) particular kinds of developmentally targeted parent-child conversations play a vital role in the development of language skill, and (2) some current clinical interventions, directly or indirectly, have a beneficial impact on children's vocabulary and narrative skills, but most approaches are ad hoc. Targeting language via parent-child conversation has the potential to improve the outcomes of current clinical interventions in the preschool years.

The Benefits of Reminiscing With Young Children

Parents talk about the past with their young children from the time their children can talk. There is robust evidence that when parents discuss the past in a detailed, emotional, and collaborative way (elaborative reminiscing), their children have stronger autobiographical memory skills. We review recent research showing that elaborative reminiscing also has significant benefits for children’s language and socioemotional skills. Importantly, these findings show that elaborative reminiscing is effective with children at risk of compromised development in the context of poverty, maltreatment, or psychopathology. Elaborative reminiscing appears to foster development by providing children with practice using challenging language, encouraging them to put their experiences into words, and optimizing memory for the information gained during conversations. Although further research in diverse cultures is required, reminiscing is a promising tool—available to all families—for promoting children’s cognitive and socioemotional development.