Predicting the Quality of Mother–Child Reminiscing Surrounding Negative Emotional Events at 42 and 48 Months Old

Abstract

Researchers have speculated that a number of factors likely predict the quality of reminiscing between preschool children and their mothers. This study was designed to investigate three such factors, including child temperament, maternal personality, and maternal caregiving representations. Seventy mothers and their preschool children were recruited for the study. When the child was 42 months of age, mothers completed measures of her personality and the child's temperament. Mothers also took part in the shortened Parent Development Inventory, which was coded for coherence, pleasure, comfort, and perspective taking. At both 42 and 48 months, the mother–child dyad reminisced about a past event in which the child experienced a negative emotion. These conversations were coded for the amount of maternal elaboration, the discussion of emotion, and dyadic qualities (such as collaboration and intersubjectivity). At 42 months, aspects of maternal personality and child temperament were most associated with reminiscing quality. However, at 48 months, it was primarily maternal representations of relationships that predicted high-quality reminiscing in the dyad.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant to the first author (5R03HD046448-03).

Notes

¹We also asked mothers and children to reminisce about a positively valenced event, but these conversations were not consistently related to temperament, personality, or maternal representations of relationships. Thus, these conversations are not included in the article or analyses.

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^b Scored on a 0- to 4-point scale.

^c Scored on a 1- to 7-point scale.

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²Interactions between temperament variables and personality factors were also explored. However, there was no consistent pattern of interactions that emerged. Given the small sample size, we likely do not have the power to test goodness-of-fit concepts in these models. See Bird et al. (2006) for a study that tested goodness-of-fit concepts.