Parental Reminiscing About Positive and Negative Events

Abstract

We examined how 67 parent-child dyads talked about 2 emotionally laden events: an injury resulting in emergency room treatment and an individually nominated, positively valenced experience. Group differences were found in parental reminiscing between positive and negative events such that parents asked a higher proportion of open-ended memory questions in conversations about negative experiences and a higher proportion of yes-no questions in conversations about positive experiences. Also, parents focused more on emotion when discussing positive experiences with their children and more on causal explanations during the negative conversations. However, individual parents were consistent across event types in both reminiscing style and content. Finally, parental reminiscing style was correlated with children's recall for both types of events such that parents with an elaborative style had children who reported more new information during the conversations. Implications for children coping with stressful experiences as well as future research are discussed.