Jennifer G. Bohanek

Meaning making in mothers’ and children's narratives of emotional events

Narrative coherence and the inclusion of mental state language are critical aspects of meaning making, especially about stressful events. Mothers and their 8- to 12-year-old children with asthma independently narrated a time they were scared, frustrated, and happy. Although mothers’ narratives were generally more coherent and more saturated with mental state language than childrens narratives, for both mothers and children narratives of negative events were more coherent and contained more mental state language than narratives of positive events overall, and narratives of scary events contained more mental state language than narratives of frustrating events. Coherence appears to be multifaceted, in that the three dimensions of coherence coded, context, chronology, and theme were not strongly interrelated within narratives of the same event, but use of mental state language, including cognitive-processing and emotion words, appears to be more integrated. Moreover, while thematic coherence seems to be a consistent individual narrative style across valence of event being narrated, mental state language appears to be a consistent style only across the two stressful event narratives. Finally, and quite surprisingly, there were virtually no relations between mothers’ and childrens narrative meaning making.

Family Reminiscing Style: Parent Gender and Emotional Focus in Relation to Child Well-Being

Family reminiscing is a critical part of family interaction related to child outcome. In this study, we extended previous research by examining both mothers and fathers, in two-parent racially diverse middle-class families, reminiscing with their 9- to 12-year-old children about both the facts and the emotional aspects of shared positive and negative events. Mothers were more elaborative than fathers, and both mothers and fathers elaborated and evaluated more about the facts of positive than negative events, but there were no differences in parental reminiscing about the emotional aspects of these events. Fathers showed a more consistent reminiscing style across event and information type, whereas mothers seem to show a more nuanced style differentiated by topic. Most interesting, maternal elaborations and evaluations about the facts of negative events were related to higher child well-being, whereas paternal elaborations and evaluations about the emotional aspects of both positive and negative events were related to lower child well-being. Implications for the gendered nature of reminiscing are discussed.

Family Narratives, Self, and Gender in Early Adolescence.

Past research has suggested that family reminiscing may be a particularly important avenue for the development of childrens well-being. In this study, the authors examined the ways in which mothers and fathers scaffold conversations about past emotional events with their preadolescent children. Narratives of positive and negative shared family events were coded for parental expression and explanation of emotion, and these variables were related to measures of childrens developing self-esteem and emotional and behavioral adjustment 2 years later. Overall, mothers express and explain more emotion than do fathers, and maternal expression and explanation of emotion within family narratives is generally related to positive self-esteem and adjustment in sons and daughters. However, paternal expression and explanation of emotion within family narratives generally appears to be related to poorer self-esteem and adjustment for sons and daughters. Implications for adolescent development, parental scaffolding of emotion, and gender roles within the family are discussed.

Gender Differences in Adolescents’ Autobiographical Narratives

In this study, the authors examined gender differences in narratives of positive and negative life experiences during middle adolescence, a critical period for the development of identity and a life narrative (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2001). Examining a wider variety of narrative meaning-making devices than previous research, they found that 13- to 16-year old racially and economically diverse females told more elaborated, coherent, reflective, and agentic narratives than did adolescent males. There were surprisingly few differences between narratives of positive and negative events. These findings replicate and extend previous findings of gender differences in autobiographical narratives in early childhood and adulthood and indicate that gender is a critical filter through which personal memory and identity are constructed during adolescence.

Patterns of Family Narrative Co-construction in Relation to Adolescent Identity and Well-Being

In this excerpt, a family with a 12-year-old adolescent co-narrates a shared sad experience, the death of the adolescent’s great-grandfather. As this example points to, family narratives are a window into how families construct a shared sense of history, understand and validate each others’ emotions and create a sense of who they are as a family, and as individuals, in the present.

Null's the word: A comparison of memory quality for intensely negative and positive events

Research comparing memories of traumatic and positive events has produced inconsistent results. Complicating the issue, researchers employ a variety of measures (e.g., narrative or questionnaire) that make comparison across studies difficult. Further, this research has been criticised for lacking adequate statistical controls (Sotgiu & Mormont, 2008). Our study employed both narrative and questionnaire methodologies and compared memories for highly negative and positive events while controlling for retention interval, intensity of the event, and word count in the narrative measures. A total of 108 racially diverse college undergraduates wrote narratives and completed the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire about the most negative and the most positive event they had experienced, and memories were assessed for narrative coherence, language indicative of cognition, insight and sensory experience, subjective ratings of clarity, sensory detail, contextual detail, temporal detail, and the inclusion of thoughts and feelings. Results indicate no differences between memories for highly negative and positive events when retention interval and emotional intensity are controlled.