Mother-Child Reminiscing: Support for Socialization of Affect Regulation?

Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Barton, Michelle

Keywords

Affect Regulation, Emotion, Motherhood, Socialization, Child Development, Mother-Child Relationship

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

The current study investigated the interactions between the socialization of emotion through mothers' reminiscing style when discussing emotional past events with their children, and the development of emotion regulation during the early childhood period. Six mothers and their children between the ages of 36 and 60 months participated in a reminiscing task and a delay-of-gratification/compliance task. The main question of this study did not find the expected trend of highly elaborative mothers having children with more advanced affect regulation strategies. This finding may have been due to the current study's use of different levels of frustration during the affect regulation task; the "non-stickers" group received a lessdesirable gratification stimuli (wrapped present), and the "stickers" group received a more-desirable gratification stimuli (wrapped present with page of stickers visible on the outside) making the task more frustrating. The "stickers" group, who experienced a higher level of frustration in the affect regulation task, used less sophisticated affect regulation strategies than did the "non-stickers" group, who experienced less frustration. This finding is in line with past research which demonstrated that higher levels of distress (as in the type of emotion being experienced) affects the cognitive resources, and consequently the sophistication of regulatory strategies, available to children when regulating emotions. Further research investigating mothers� socialization of emotion through elaboration and its effects on children's development of emotion regulation strategies should take into consideration the level of cognitive resources an emotion regulation task requires, and how the outcome of the task relates to the way mothers socialize emotion regulation.

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