Robyn Fivush

Mother-Child Conversations About the Past: Relationships of Style and Memory Over Time

This study investigated long-term consistency and change in maternal style for talk about the past and relationships of those styles with childrens memory participation. Nineteen white, middle-class mother-child dyads talked about shared past events at four time points: when children were 40, 46, 58, and 70 months of age. Across the four time points, individual mothers could be consistently classified as high elaborative (e.g., they elaborated on event information much more often than they repeated their requests) or low elaborative (e.g., they elaborated less often in relation to their repetitions). However, all mothers became more elaborative over time; children also remembered more over time. Cross-lagged correlations revealed a relationship between maternal elaborativeness at the early time points and childrens later memory responding, but by the later time points, direction of influence between maternal elaborations and childrens memory responding had become bidirectional. These results are framed with respect to the importance of shared past event conversations for the development of childrens autobiographical memory.

Gender Differences in Parent–Child Emotion Narratives

Early parent–child conversations about past emotional experiences provide a rich environment for the socialization of emotions. This study explored the role of parent and child gender in this process. Participants were 21 White, middle-class, 40- to 45-month-old children and their mothers and fathers. At separate home visits, each parent discussed with their child four specific past events during which the child experienced happiness, anger, sadness, and fear, respectively. Mothers conversed more overall, talked more about emotional aspects of the experience, and used more emotion words than did fathers. Similarly, girls talked more about emotional aspects of their experiences than did boys. Further, girls used more emotion words when discussing scary events than did boys. Most intriguingly, both mothers and fathers used more emotional utterances when discussing sad events with daughters than with sons. Parent–daughter dyads also placed emotional experiences in a more interpersonal context than did parent–son dyads. Implications for the development of gender, emotional understanding, and clinical repercussions are discussed.

Style and Structure in Mother-Child Conversations about the Past.

This research examined possible stylistic differences in how mothers structure conversations about the past with their young children. Just as there are different maternal styles for talking about the “here‐and‐now,” which influence childrens language development, we explored different maternal styles for talking about the “there‐and‐then,” which might influence childrens memory development. Ten mothers and their 30–35‐month‐old children engaged in naturalistic conversations about various past events. Two styles emerged, an elaborative style and a repetitive style. Elaborative mothers talk more than repetitive mothers, they ask more memory questions, and they provide more information about the event under discussion. They are also more likely to elaborate on their previous questions, whereas repetitive mothers tend to simply repeat questions without embellishment. Implications of these two maternal styles for the childs memory development are discussed.

Culture and Language in the Emergence of Autobiographical Memory

Current conceptualizations of childhood amnesia assume that there is a “barrier” to remembering early experiences that must be overcome in order for one to begin to accumulate autobiographical memories. In contrast, we present a social-cultural-developmental perspective on the emergence of autobiographical memory. We first demonstrate the gradual emergence of autobiographical memories across the preschool years and then relate this developmental process to specific developments in language, narrative, and understanding of self and other that vary among individuals, as well as by culture and gender.

Exploring Sex Differences in the Emotional Content of Mother-Child Conversations about the Past.

In this study, the ways in which mothers and their 30–35-month-old children discussed the emotional aspects of past experiences was explored. Although previous research has established that children this age talk about emotions, and some studies have found sex differences between mother-daughter and mother-son dyads in these conversations, no study has examined explicitly the way in which emotions about the past are discussed. This is an important research question because emotional aspects of events may help provide an evaluative framework for thinking about and talking about the past. The results suggest that, with daughters, mothers focus more on positive emotions and tend not to attribute negative emotions to the child. With sons, positive and negative emotions are discussed equally. Moreover, mothers never discuss anger with their daughters but they do with their sons. Finally, mother-daughter conversations emphasize the emotional state itself, whereas mother-son conversations often discuss the causes and consequences of emotions. The way in which these patterns might contribute to childrens developing understanding of gender-appropriate emotional reactions are discussed.

Functions of parent-child reminiscing about emotionally negative events.

Parent-child reminiscing about negative experiences influences childrens developing “emotional self-concept”, which comprises three interrelated functions: self-defining (this is the kind of emotional person I am), self-in-relation (this is how I express and share my emotions with others), and coping (this is how I cope with and resolve negative emotion). In this study, we examined how 70 mostly white, middle-class mothers discuss three negative experiences (fear, anger, and sadness) with their 4-year-old children. Conversations about fear elaborate on the facts of the event and emotional resolutions, thus focusing on coping. Conversations about sadness contain evaluative feedback and emotional resolutions, thus focusing on self-in-relation and coping. Finally, conversations about anger highlight the emotional state itself, thus focusing on self-definition. Mothers are also more elaborative and more evaluative with daughters than with sons, and place emotional events in a more interpersonal context with daughters than sons. Thus girls may be forming a more elaborated and more interpersonal emotional self-concept than boys.

Mother-child talk about past emotions: Relations of maternal language and child gender over time

Abstract Emotional understanding and expression is largely constructed in sociocul-tural contexts; thus examination of the ways in which parents talk about emotions with their young children is critical for understanding emotional socialisation. In this longitudinal research, 18 white, middle-class mothers and their preschool children discussed salient past events when the children were 40, 58, and 70 months of age. Analyses revealed that mothers talked more about emotions and talked about a greater variety of emotions with daughters than with sons. Mothers also focused more on negative emotions with daughters than with sons. Although there were no gender differences between girls and boys at the beginning of the study, by the last phase, girls talked more about emotion and about a greater variety of emotion than did boys and also initiated more emotion-related discussions than did boys. Results are discussed in relation to a growing body of evidence on gender and emotion across the life span.

Gender differences in parent-child conversations about past emotions

In this study, we examined the emotional content of parents’ conversations about past events with their 40-month-old children. Subjects were 24 white middle-class children and their mothers and fathers. At separate home visits, each parent independently engaged the child in conversation about three events that parent and child had experienced together only once before. Mothers and fathers talked about emotional aspects of events in similar ways, but they both used a greater number and variety of emotion words with daughters than with sons. Parents also mentioned sad aspects of events more with daughters than with sons. Implications of the differential socialization of emotion for boys and girls are discussed.

Two-year-old talk about the past

Children between 29 and 35 months of age were interviewed in order to determine how much they remember about their past experiences, how they organize what they remember, and how long they are able to retain memories of past events. Children readily participated in the conversations, and recalled a great deal of accurate information about events they had experienced both in the recent past (up to 3 months ago) and the distant past (more than 3 months ago). The mean number of conversational turns, the number and type of questions asked (prompts, probes, yes/no), and the amount and type of information provided by the child about the events under discussion did not differ significantly for the two retention intervals. Children organized their recall in one of two ways, in a question/answer form or a narrative form, but this was neither an individual difference nor a function of retention interval. The results are discussed along with other recent findings about young childrens memory abilities, and directions for future research are suggested.

Memories of Mickey Mouse: Young children recount their trip to disneyworld

Abstract What young children remember and how long they retain such information are crucial issues for the study of young childrens memory. In this research, these issues were examined by asking children who visited Disneyworld at 37 or 49 months of age to recall their experience. Half of the children were interviewed 6 months after their trip, and the remaining children were interviewed after 18 months. Surprisingly, there were no effects for age or retention interval on the amount children recalled; all children recounted a great deal of accurate information about their Disneyworld experience. However, older childrens reports were more detailed than younger childrens, and older children tended to recall more information spontaneously than did younger children. Finally, there is some suggestion that children who talked about their Disneyworld experience more frequently with their families subsequently recounted more information during the memory interview. Implications for these findings are discussed.