Associations Between 3-Year-Olds' Narrative Co-Constructions with Mothers and Fathers and Their Story Completions About Affective Themes

EarZy DezleZopment and Parenting, Vol. 5 (3), 149-160 (1996)

Associations getween 3-Year-Olds’ Narrative Co-Constructions with Mothers and Fathers and Their Story Completions About Affective Themes

David Oppenheim University of Haifa, Israel

Robert N. Emde University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, U S A

Frederick S. Wamboldt National Jewish Hospital for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine and University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, U S A

Oral narratives are important developmental attainments for young children, and they provide them with a new mode for organizing personal experience. Narratives are not only individual constructions, howevet; they are also shaped and transformed by parent-child transactions. In this study the relations between mother- and fatheHhild co-constructions of a narrative involving emotional themes and the emotional organization of children’s narratives obtained using the MacAtthur Story-Stem Battery (MSSB) were investigated. The results showed associations between both mothep and fathe-hild co-constructions and children’s MSSB narratives. In addition, the findings highlighted the dyadic aspects of co-constructions and the importance of taking into consideration children’s co-constructions with both parents.

Keywords: narrative; co-construction; parent-child interaction; emotional development

Children’s oral narrative capacities typically emerge within a year following the appearance of two-word combinations (Reese and Fivush, 1993; Wolf, in press), and they provide a new mode for organizing and making sense of personal experience (Fivush, 1993). The narrative mode of communication and thought continues to be important throughout life (Bruner, 1986; Howard, 1991; Address for correspondence: Dr D. Oppenheim, Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel. Email: [email protected]. Fax: (972) 4 825-3896.

Sarbin, 1986; Stem, 198!5), and may have significant implications for the development of social, emotional and cultural aspects of the self (Fivush, 1991; Miller et al., 1992; Nelson, 1989; Stem, 1985; Wolf, 1990; Watson, 1989). In addition to being important developmental attainments for children, narratives also provide a unique opportunity for the child development researcher. They are an entrk to the child’s internal world, and therefore can open a window into children’s understanding and experience of interpersonal situations, as well as their

CCC 1057-3593/96/030149-12 Q1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 1 July 2996 Accepted 7 November 1996

150 D. Oppenheim, R. N . Emde and F. S . Wamboldt

efforts to organize, make sense of and deal with emotions.

Narratives, however, are not only intra-individual constructions. Rather, they typically happen between people, and can thus be shaped and transformed by transactions within important relationships. As budding narrators, children have been conceptualized as apprentices (Rogoff, 1990) learning one of the basic tools of their culture-how to organize and communicate personal experience coherently and effectively (Miller et al., 1992). Children’s narrative skills develop in joint conversations with their parents called ‘co-constructions’ (Reese and Fivush, 1993). At the beginning parents carry most of the burden of providing narrative structure, and they weave children’s contributions, which may be very minimal, into more complex narratives (Fivush, 1991; Snow, 1990). Gradually, children carry more of the burden of narrative construction themselves, and can use their narrative skills when apart from their parents as well (Hudson, 1990; Fivush, 1991; McCabe and Peterson, 1991). Thus, children’s narrative skills are rooted in their co-construction experiences. The apprenticeship model does not imply that children are passive recipients of parental input, however. On the contrary, because parents scaffold children’s contributions to the conversations, tailoring their input to the level and capacity of the child, children have a strong influence on co-construction processes as well. Thus, co-constructions are joint creations, co-regulated by parents and children (Fogel, 1991).

Until recently, most of the research on narratives, both as child productions and as co-constructed by parents and children, has focused on cognitive and linguistic aspects (e.g. Berman and Slobin, 1994). The focus of this study, however, was on the emotional aspects of narratives. Why study narratives from the point of view of emotions? First, narratives involve not only relating the facts of the story (their rejiiential aspect) but also the narrator’s subjective stance vis-d-vis the narrated events (the euuluative aspect) (Labov, 1982). Thus, by definition, narratives convey important information regarding the narrator‘s emotions. In addition, narratives are often about personal and interpersonal events likely to be significant to the narrator and therefore give rise to emotions. In fact, sharing such personal and interpersonal emotional events is a central motiva- tor of story-telling (Wolf, in press). Finally, narratives often reflect children’s efforts to make sense of complex personal experience (Oppenheim and Waters, 1995) and, as such, may reflect

children’s emotions. Moreover, the process of narration itself may influence children’s emotions as well. For example, being able to construct an emotionally coherent narrative around a difficult event may help reduce anxiety or fear and thus influence the child’s reaction to the event (Watson, 1989; Wolf, 1990).

The emotional aspect of narratives is salient for co-constructed narratives as well. Although not focusing on narratives per se, Dunn et al. (1991) studied conversations about emotional events between mothers and children, and found links between early mother-child conversations about emotions and children’s later emotional understanding in a perspective-taking task (see also Dunn et al., 1987; Howe, 1991). Fivush (1991) found that mothers who made more evaluative and emotional comments when discussing the past with their children early in development had children who explicitly included emotional information in their personal narratives later in development. Focusing more specifically on narrative co-construction (rather than conversations more generally), Slade (1994) has

arena in which parenis and children jointly make sense and construct narrative accounts of children’s experience, contributing to children’s understanding and ability to cope with stressful, painful emotions.

In sum, individual and co-constructed narratives have been construed as important for emotional processes, and a few recent studies have begun to support these notions, particularly through the study of parent-child Conversations (e.g. Fivush, 1993; Dunn et aZ., 1987, 1991). The present study continues this line of research, but, guided by the narrative approach, focuses more specifically on stories, both as co-constructed by parents and children and as told by children when apart from their parents in a story-completion task. Specifi- cally, the goal was to study the emotional and interactional quality of parent-child narrative co- constructions, and examine the associations between these co-constructions and the coherence and themes in the narratives children constructed in a story-completion task.

To assess parent-child co-constructions, we observed parents and children jointly constructing a story from a wordless picture book which involved a wide range of emotional themes. A fictional story construction task (rather than narration of autobiographical events) was chosen because such a task explicitly involves narrative construction, whereas conversations about past events may or may not take the form of narrative.

argued that such co-constructions are an important

Parent-Child Narrative Co-Constructions 151

Also, in discussions of autobiographical events there is little control over the type of events selected, while here all dyads were presented with the same picture book.

To asses children’s narratives as told when apart from their parents, we used the MacArthur Story- Stem Battery (MSSB; Bretherton et al., 199Oa) in which children are asked to complete play narratives involving emotion and conflict themes. The MSSB and similar story-completion approaches have been successfully used in several studies involving children’s moral development (Buchsbaum and Emde, 1990), emotional development (Oppenheim et al., in press a,b), attachment (Bretherton et al., 199Ob), child maltreatment (Buchsbaum et al., 1992) and behaviour problems (Warren et al., in press). Overall, these studies have shown links between children’s emotional adjustment (as reflected in their attachment security, behaviour problems or maltreatment experience) and story completions, particularly in terms of the positive and negative emotional themes children constructed and the coherence of the stories. Based on the apprenticeship model and the studies reviewed above, we hypothesized that the emotional organization of children’s story completions would be related to the emotional and interactional qualities of parent-child co-constructions. More specifically, we hypothesized that children who were more competent as interactional partners in the co-constructions, who had parents who were more effective in their role as facilitators of their children’s narrative productions (Fivush, 1991) and who were part of child-parent dyads that established higher levels of mutuality (Fogel, 1991) would construct story completions that had more positive emotional themes and were more coherent.

Contributions From Mother- and F a t h d h i l d Co-Constructions

When the roles of parent-child co-construction processes are examined, both mother-child and father-child relationships need to be considered. Previous research suggests the mothers’ and fathers’ interactions with their children may differ in important ways. For example, research exploring parents’ linguistic styles during conversations with their children suggests systematic differences between paternal and maternal styles (Mannle and Tomasello, 1987), although recently Reese and Fivush (1993) have failed to discover such differences in parent-child co-construdions. From a different perspective, attachment researchers have frequently argued that the security of child-mother

and child-father attachments is independent (Goowns and van Jzendoorn, 1990; Lamb, 1978), reflecting what are presumed to be different interactive styles. While some authors (e.g. Fox et al., 1991) doubt the independence findings are as strong as they have been presented, most investi- gators would agree that there are a considerable number of children who have a secure attachment with one parent and an insecure attachment with the other parent. Finally, research on father-child interaction has also found stylistic differences between father- and mother-child interactions (see Lamb, 1981, for review). Based on the findings regarding qualitative differences between mother- and father-child relationships, the associations between both mother- and father-child co-constructions and children’s narratives were examined.

METHOD

Participants Forty-eight 40-month-olds (25 girls, 23 boys) and their parents participated in the study. Subjects were recruited through a subject pool composed of parents who volunteered for ‘child development research’ when the children were born. Parents were contacted by phone and invited to be in a family study on children’s emotional development. Of those contacted, 85% agreed to participate, with the 15% who declined primarily citing time con- straints as the reason.

Parents were Euro-American except for one African-American, one Hispanic and one Asian- American parent. Parents’ median ages were 32 (range 2 k M ) and 35 (range 28-49) years for mothers and fathers respectively. Forty-two per cent of mothers worked 20 hours or more per week outside of the home and 92% of fathers worked at least 40 hours per week outside of the home. All parents completed high school, with 62% of mothers and 74% of fathers completing college. Most families’ (45%) income was in the $30000- $5OOOO bracket, with only one family having an income of less than $20000. SES ratings (Hollingshead, 1975) showed that the majority of families (70%0) were in level II (‘business agent or manager’) or level I (’professional and large business owner’).

Twelve per cent of the children were only children, 49% were first-born and 39% were later born. Sixty-three per cent of the children had one more sibling and 25% had two or more siblings.

152 D. Oppenheim, R. N. Emde and F. S. Wamboldt

Procedure

This report is part of a larger study on children’s emotion and narrative development (Oppenheim et aZ., in press a; Warren et al., in press). The‘study involved multiple observations during both laboratory and home sessions, but only the episodes relevant for the current report will be described. The laboratory visit were videotaped from behind a one- way mirror and included the following observations.

Father-Child Frog Book Co-Construction (approximately 7 minutes) In this segment, fathers and children were asked to jointly construct a story based on an abbreviated version of an emotionally evocative picture book without text (OneFrog Too Many by Mercer Mayer). The plot involves themes of jealousy, rivalry, aggression, exclusion, loss, guilt and reunion following separation, all richly expressed in the characters’ facial expressions and actions. Fathers and children were instructed as follows: ‘This is a story about a big frog, a little frog, and a boy, but it has no words, just pictures. We would like you to make up the words for this story’. In addition, fathers were asked to help their children talk about what the characters were doing and feeling. The segment lasted until fathers and children completed the book.

MacArthur Story-Stem Battery (average of 38 minutes) TheMSSB (Brethertonetal., 1990a) includes 11 story stems and was used to elicit children’s narrative completions to emotionally charged story stems (see Appendix for stories). The male examiner began the task by telling the child that they were going to play together, and that he (examiner) would start some stories and the child would finish them. Following the introduction, a warm-up stem was presented, in which a family consisting of a mother, father, older child, younger child, grandmother and a family dog was shown, and each character named. Both child story characters were of the same sex as the subject. Next the mother figure invited the family to have a birthday party for the older child, and the subject was asked to complete the story. Children were encouraged to enter a narrative, expressive mode. The examiner did not continue with the remainder of the story stems until children showed at least three of the following: talking with the examiner, manipulating the dolls, talking in character voice, or referring to

the birthday story. The stems were presented in an animated, dramatic manner to help the child get into the appropriate frame, and all ended with the invitation, ‘Show me and tell me what happens next’. Non-diredive comments such as ’Anything else happens in the story?’ were used to facilitate children’s narratives. In addition, stems had standard probes designed to explore specific issues. For example, if after a stem that described a child getting hurt the subject did not suggest what might happen to the child, the examiner would ask, ’Does anybody do anything about the hurt hand?’ The examiner moved from one story stem to the next after children addressed the main issue in the stem and brought the narrative to an end. If children addressed the main issue in the story and then continued to develop additional themes, the examiner waited for a natural pause and asked, ‘How does the story end?‘. To help children feel comfortable with the new task, mothers were present for the first three stories but were seated behind the child in the comer of the room, and the remainder of the narratives were administered without mothers in the room. Thirty-three children (65%) completed all 11 narratives and 15 additional children (29%) completed 10 narratives; analyses presented in this report are based on these 48 children.

Procedure of the Home Visit A home visit was conducted by a female examiner 1-2 weeks after the laboratory visit. The entire visit was videotaped by the examiner, and included the following segments.

Mother-Child Frog Book Co-Construction (approximately 7 minutes) The same co-construction task that was observed in the laboratory involving father and child was repeated in the home involving mother and child.

Story stems In order to get an estimate of the stability in children’s MSSB narratives across contexts, two additional story stems (‘Spilled Cereal‘ and ’Exclusion T), designed to be similar to two of the laboratory story stems (‘Spilled Juice’ and ’Exclusion 1‘), were administered. All subjects completed both story stems.

PPVT Children‘s level of receptive one-word vocabulary was assessed using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (Dunn and Dunn, 1981) and stan-


dardized scores were computed based on the norms provided by the test’s authors.

Coding of Obsmations

Co-Constructions The co-construction episodes were rated from videotape on scales designed to assess individual differences in child and maternal contributions to the co-constructions as well as differences at the level of dyadic interaction. Three scales focused on the emotional and cognitive sensitivity of parents’ help: parental guidance focused on the match between parental input and the child’s need for support, and ranged from 1 (parent provides too little support for the child so child is required to tell most of the story by him/herself, or parent dominates the situation and leaves no room for the child’s contribution) to 5 (parent provides optimal support and there is consistent and appropriate balance between child and parent contributions to the story); emotional scaffolding involved the parent‘s use of emotion in voice and gesture to help direct and sustain the child’s attention, and ranged from 1 (parent displays very little affect, or uses affect in a confusing or overwhelming way) to 5 (parent expresses genuine and vivid affect in a way that helps the child focus on the story and on key affective elements); and positive parental communication focused on parental communicative behaviours which facilitate children’s contributions to the narratives, and ranged from 1 (parent is cold, aloof, or criticizes and rejects child’s contribution, or interrupts child) to 5 (parent is accepting of the child, nods, smiles to child, elaborates on the child’s contributions). Three scales focused on dyadic aspects of shared meaning and affect: level of intersubjectivity focused on the extent to which partners shared focus, agenda and meaning, and ranged from 1 (little shared focus or attention) to 5 (shared agenda and meaning in the context of harmonious interaction); shared positive affect focused on moments in which parent and child shared positive emotions, and ranged from 1 (no shared positive emotion, many missed opportu- nities) to 5 (frequent and well-matched moments of shared positive affect); and shared negative affect focused on moments in which parent and child shared negative emotions, ranging from 1 (no shared negative emotion, many missed opportu- nities) to 5 (frequent and well-matched moments of shared negative affect). Finally, positive child communication focused on children’s competence as interactional partners, and ranged from 1 (child

interrupts, ignores, refuses, or is otherwise non- responsive to parent) to 5 (child accepts parent’s directives happily, answers questions, elaborates on parent‘s contributions). Two coders blind to other information about the families coded the co- construction observations, with one coder assigned to the mother-child observations and the other coder assigned to the father-child observations. Reliability between each of the coders and a third coder (A. Renouf) who was involved in the development of the coding system was established using training tapes and checked periodically on 20% of the tapes without coders’ awareness to avoid drift. Differences between the coders revealed during the reliability checks were resolved in discussion, and the consensus codes were used for data analysis. Inter-rater reliabilities (assessed using intra-class correlations) ranged between 0.74 and 0.97, with a median of 0.82. In order to reduce the number of scales involved in data analysis, two co-construction composites were formed based on conceptual grouping of the scales. The first composite involved the scales focusing on the parent (parental guidance, emotional scaffolding, help- fulness, and positive communication) and was labelled positive parental guidance. The median T

among the parental scales was 0.51 and the range of intercorrelations between the scales was between 0.39 and 0.64. The second composite involved the scales focusing on the dyad (level of intersubjediv- ity, shared positive affect and shared negative affect), and was labelled shared construction. The median r among the dyadic scales was 0.57, and the range of correlations between the scales was between 0.54 and 0.60. Because there was only one child-focused scale (positive child communication), it was kept separate.

MacArthur Story-Stem Narratives Children’s narratives were coded from videotape by a different set of two coders blind to any other information about the children using a system developed by Robinson et al. (1992). The content themes in children’s stories were coded using the following categories: empathy/helping (a character or the subject identifies with or demonstrates an understanding of the thoughts and feelings of the other, or a character helps another with a task), reparation/guilt (a character makes amends or displays guilt feelings following disharmony between story characters), compliance (a child character yields to the rules or requests of an adult; e.g. child wipes juice upon request from parent), punishment/discipline (a character, usually the

154 D. Oppenheim, R. N. Emde and F. S. Wamhld€

parent, disciplines the child; e.g. child is sent to ’time out’ following transgression; this category does not include punitive or abusive behaviours), aggression (aggression directed towards a character or prop, including hostile destructive gestures, but not in the context of punishment or discipline), personal injury (character being physically hurt or injured,withafocusonthepainorinjury’notjuston aggression) and atypical negative responses (atypical or disorganized themes with an emotionally negative tone). Inter-rater reliabilities calculated using Cohen’s kappa ranged between 0.79 and 1.0 with a median of 0.92. Content themes were mutually exclusive, so that each event within a narrative constructed by a child could receive only one content theme code. Also, no additional scores were given to a child who repeated a content theme in response to a given story stem. However, because a child’s narrative could contain several different themes presented sequentially, it was possible to assign several content themes to one narrative, thus reflecting individual differences in the range of themes in the narratives. The number of content themes belonging to each category was counted across all the laboratory narratives, and mean content theme scores (corrected for the number of completed narratives) were generated. Based on conceptual considerations, three content theme composites were generated: empathy/helping and reparation/@t were combined to form a prosocial themes composite (r between themes was 0.24, p<0.05), punishment/discipline and compliance were combined to form a discipline themes composite (Y between themes was 0.62, p<O.Ol) and aggression, personal injury and atypical negative responses were combined to form an aggressive themes composite (YS between themes ranged between ~ 0 . 3 1 and r=0.52). Initially, separate prosocial, discipline and aggressive themes composites were generated for the narratives completed in the home and in the laboratory and the correlations across contexts were found to be sigruficant (r=0.23, p<0.05; -0.27, p<0.05; and e0.24, p<0.05 for discipline, prosocial and aggressive themes, respectively). Based on these associations, and in order to generate the most reliable composite scores, the composites used for analyses were based on summing laboratory and home narrative scores.

The coherence of children’s narratives was coded on a four-point scale, ranging from 1 (not coherent, fragmented, shifts in story line) to4 (very coherent, a logical, sequential series of events that are related to the story stem), and separate laboratory and home narrative coherence composites were generated by

summing the scores across narratives and dividing by the number of completed narratives. The correla- tion between the laboratory and home narrative coherence composites was 0.31 (p<O.O5), and in order to achieve the most reliable score an overall narrative coherence composite was generated by summing scores across laboratory and home narratives. The internal consistency of this composite was 0.85. Inter- rater reliability calculated using kappa was 0.78.

RESULTS

Prelimina y Analyses Descriptive statistics of the study variables are presented in Table 1. Examination of the data shows that the study variables had good variability (note that the actual range of some of the scores was smaller than the potential range as defined by the scales; this was because these scores were composites and not raw scores).

Linguistic Competence A central goal of the study was to find associations between the co-constructions and children’s MSSB narratives. Because children’s linguistic competence might account for such associations, pre- liminary analyses were conducted to examine the associations between the co-construction and MSSB variables and children’s PPVT scores. Results indicated that PPVT was significantly correlated with two of the three MSSB variables (r=0.46, p < 0.01 and -0.37, p < 0.01 for narrative coherence and discipline themes, respectively) and was also significantly correlated with two co-construction scales (r=0.31, p < 0.05 and e0.30,~ < 0.05 for shared construction with mother and positive child communication with mother, respectively).

Associations Between Parent-Child Co-Constructions and Children‘s MSSB Narratives

The associations between parent-child co-constructions and children’s MSSB narratives were examined using partial correlations to control for the level of children‘s PPVT scores (see Table 2). The partial correlations were first examined separately for boys and girls, but the pattern of correlations was the same, and therefore the results are reported for all subjects. With regard to the mother-child co- constructions, results showed that positive maternal guidance was associated with higher narrative coherence ratings and more discipline themes in

Parenf-Chiid Narrative Co-Constructions 155

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of study variables

Variable name Mean Standard deviation R m F

MSSB variables Narrative coherence Prosocial themes Discipline themes Aggressive themes

Co-construction variables Positive maternal guidance Shared construction with mother Positive child communication with mother Positive paternal guidance Shared construction with father Positive child communication with father

PPVT

1.62 0.44 0.35 0.41

3.60 2.96 3.43 3.37 2.68 3.35

110.92

0.67 0.24 0.23 0.36

0.54 0.84 0.70 0.59 0.85 1.01

15.62

0.08-2.86 0-1.57 0-1.07 0-1.5

2.50-4.75 1.33-5.00 1.00-5.00 2.00-4.75 1.OCM.67 1.00-5.00

70-138

Table 2. Partial correlations between the co-constructions and children's MSSB narratives controlling for PPVT

Co-construction scales

Mother-child scales Positive maternal guidance Shared construction with mother Positive child communication with mother

Positive paternal guidance Shared construction with father Positive child communication with father

Father-child scales

Narrative coherence

0.29* 0.27* 0.34*'

0.16 0.35" 0.30*

Prosocial themes

Discipline themes

0.20+ 0.37'* 0.35-

0.09 0.29* 0.34"

0.23' 0.37' 0.18

0.29* 0.37'* 0.48''

Aggressive themes

-0.15 - 0.15 - 0.20

0.00 - 0.07 - 0.10

*p < 0.05. "p <0.01. children's MSSB narratives. Shared construction with mother was associated with higher narrative coherence ratings and more prosocial and discipline themes. Finally, positive child communication with mother was associated with higher narrative coherence ratings and more prosocial themes. No associations were found regarding aggressive themes.

Dyadic and Child Contrht ions to Children's MSSB Narratives The results regarding links between the co-constructions and children's MSSB narratives raised an interesting question: could the dyadic scores (i.e. shared construction) explain variance in children's MSSB narratives beyond the variance explained by the individual child scores (i.e. positive child communication)? In order to address this question, we first created an aggregate score for the MSSB narratives. This was done to reduce the number of correlations involved in the subsequent analyses and to generate a more reliable score for children's MSSB narratives. The narrative coherence, prosocial

themes, discipline themes and aggressive themes scores were standardized and summed (with aggressive themes added inversely), forming an aggregate reflecting individual differences in the overall organization and emotional quality of the MSSB narratives. Next we computed partial correlations between the shared construction scores and the MSSB composite, controlling for positive child communication. With regard to mother-child co- constructions, results showed associations between shared construction with mother and the MSSB composite, controlling for positive child communication (r=0.32, p c 0.01). The same picture emerged with regard to father-child co-constructions. Associations were found between shared construction with father and the MSSB composite controlling for positive child communication (e0.23, p < 0.05).

Separate Contributions of Mother-Child and Fathet-Child Co-Constructions

The findings regarding associations between parent-child co-constructions and children's MSSB narratives raised two additional questions: First,

1% D. Oppenheim, R. N . Emde and F. S . Wamboldt

Table 3. Separate contributions from mother- and father-child co-constructions to MSSB narratives

Step Variable

1 Positive maternal guidance 2 Positive paternal guidance

1 Shared construction with mother 2 Shared construction with father

1 2

Positive child communication with father Positive child communication with mother

R change F change

0.42 10.17 0.06 3.23

0.51 17.84 0.09 6.99

0.47 13.84 0.08 6.01

Sig. F change

0.002 0.07

0.0001 0.01

0.0005 0.01

are there associations between co-constructions with mother and fathers, and second, if we consider mother- and father-child co-constructions together, could we find evidence for separate contributions from each co-mnstruction to the variance in children’s narratives?

With regard to the first question, we found that positive maternal guidance was not associated with positive paternal guidance (r=0.07, p > 0.10), but shared Construction with mother was associated with shared construction with father (r=0.31, p < 0.05) and positive child communication with mother was associated with positive child communication with father (r=0.37, p -= 0.01).

A regression approach was used to examine the second question. This question was addressed separately for each of the co-construction variables by entering into the regression equation, using the stepwise method, the same variable from the mother- and father-child co-constructions (e.g. positive maternal guidance and positive paternal guidance) as predictors of the MSSB composite.

The results supported the ’separate contributions’ pattern. With regard to the parental scores, positive maternal guidance and positive paternal guidance accounted each for separate parts of the variance in the MSSB composite (although the results involving positive paternal guidance were only significant at the p=0.07 level), with the maternal composite entering first (Table 3). A similar picture was found regarding the dyadic scores. Shared construction with mother and shared construction with father accounted each for separate parts of the variance in the MSSB composite. Here too the score from the mother-child co-construction entered first. Finally, with regard to the child scales, positive child communication with mother and positive child communication with father accounted each for a separate part of the variance in the MSSB composite, but here the scores from the father-child co- construction entered first.

DISCUSSION

We discuss the results of this study around three foci: associations between parentald co-constructions and children’s W B narratives, the importance of dyadic aspects of cocons~ctions, and the si@- cance of considering children‘s co-constructions with both parents. Taken together, the findings illuminate the transactional nature of co-construction processes and their sigruficance for children’s narratives.

The co-construction scales of positive parental guidance, shared construction and positive child communication were related to coherence, prosocial themes and discipline themes in children’s MSSB narratives. Thus, children who were more competent as communicative partners, who had parents who were more sensitive in guiding them through the co- construction task and who were part of dyads characterized by relatively high levels of shared affect and mutuality constructed MSSB narratives that can be seen as more emotionally coherent. They addressed the conflicts or problems in the stories openly, as reflected in their higher coherence scores, and brought the stories to positive resolutions, as reflected in their relatively higher prosocial and discipline themes scores. Conversely, children who were less competent as communicative partners, who had parents who were less sensitive in guiding them through the co-construction task and who were part of dyads characterized by relatively low levels of shared affect and mutuality constructed W B narratives that can be described as less emotionally coherent: They had difficulties in addressing the conflicts or problems in the stories, as reflected in their lower coherence scores, and failed to bring the stories to positive resolutions, as reflected in their relatively lower prosocial and discipline themes scores. This pattern was true regarding both mother- and father-child coconstructions, although the results regarding positive paternal guidance were somewhat less consistent.


The second aspect of the findings involved the relative contributions of child and dyadic levels of the co-constructions to children’s MSSB narratives. As discussed earlier, co-constructions are transactional, co-regulatory processes in which partners contribute jointly to form and sustain mutuality. Mutuality is thus a dyadic construct which, although based on the contributions of both partners, cannot be reduced to measures assessing individual performance. According to this line of thought, it may be expected that the dyadic, shared construction composite would capture aspects of the interaction not tapped by the individual child scale (positive child communication), and would therefore account for additional variance in the MSSB narratives. Confirming this expectation, we found significant associations between shared construction and the MSSB composite even when positive child communication was held constant. Furthermore, this pattern was found for both mother- and father-child co-constructions. Taken together, the findings showed that the

emotional themes and the coherence of children’s narratives about emotion and conflict themes were related to the co-constructive parent-child transactions. Within such co-constructions, furthermore, it was important to examine both the individual contributions of parents and children to the ongoing co-construction process and the degree to which parents and children worked collaboratively and established mutuality. More speculatively, perhaps, and along the lines of the apprenticeship model, our findings suggest that individual emotional coherence, as reflected in children’s MSSB narratives, and dyadic coherence, as reflected in p a r e n t a d co- constructions, are related (see Bretherton, 1990, for a similar argument). We are cautious about this interpretation, because dyadic coherence was not assessed directly. However, it may be possible to suggest that the child, parent and dyadic co- construction scales assessed differences between dyads in the extent to which they established a coherent interactional flow; these differences, in turn, were linked to the emotional coherence of children’s individual narratives. Viewed from this angle, the results are not only consistent with the apprentice ship model which traces individual characteristics of children to their interpersonal, social origins, but also extend this model by applying it to the socio- emotional domain, in which it has less frequently been applied (Rosgoff, 1990).

Finally, the third aspect of the results involved considering both mother- and father-child co- constructions. We did not conduct direct compar-

isons between mother-child and father-child co- constructions because in this study parent (i.e. mother or father) and context (i.e. laboratory or home) were confounded. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note the basic similarity in the pattern of relations between the co-constructions and the MSSB narratives for mothers and fathers. Thus, while we cannot draw conclusions as to whether mother-child and father-child co-constructions were different or similar, we do know that our hypothesis regarding links between parent-child co-constructions and children’s MSSB narratives received support for both mothers and fathers, thus lending it additional support. Based on this similarity, it may be asked whether

we gain by having information about children’s co- constructions with both parents. Perhaps observing children with one parent is sufficient? The first clue that this might not be the case came from the lack of association between maternal and paternal guidance, suggesting that children may have different experiences with mothers and fathers. Furthermore, to address this question directly, we examined whether, when considered together, mother- and f a t h e a d co-constructions would each make separate contributions to the variance in children’s narratives. The results supported a separate contributions pattern for each of the three co-construction measures (positive parental guidance, shared construction, positive child communication). Thus, it seems that in account- ing for variance in children’s story completions, we gain by having information about children’s co- constructions with both parents. More generally, these findings may suggest that children have different co-mnstruction experiences with their mothers and fathers, and that these experiences contribute separately to their emotion narratives. When such contributions are discussed, however, it should be kept in mind that the study was correla- tional and any causal inferences are very tentative.

We also examined the order of entry of the maternal and paternal variables into the regression equations ’predicting‘ children’s story completions. In the case of both positive parental guidance and shared construction the maternal composite entered first, whereas in the case of positive child communication the paternal composite entered first. When examining these findings, it should be kept in mind that the order of entry of the patemal and maternal variables should not be interpreted as indicating their relative importance. This is so both due to the limitations of this study as discussed above (i.e. confounding of order and parent) and to statistical considerations (e.g. Pedhazur, 1982). None the less,

158 D. Oppenheim, R. N. Emde and F. S . Wamboldt

the results may suggest an interesting picture regarding the relative sigruficance of children’s co- constructions with mothers and fathers. It may be that in thinking about the relations between children’s ceconstructions with both parents and their individual narratives we should not pose a global question, namely, whether co-constructions with one parent are more significant than those with the other parent, but, rather, a more differentiated, specific question: which aspect of children’s individual narratives is linked to their co-constructions with one parent or the other? It may very well be that certain aspects of children’s narratives (e.g. specific themes) are associated with co-constructions with one parent, while other aspects are associated with co-constructions with the other parent.

In closing, two limitations need to be mentioned. First, children’s MSSB narratives were assessed concurrently with the co-constructions. Thus, the importance of co-constructions for children’s later development, a central implication of the approach advanced in this study, has not been shown. The concurrent assessment of ccxonstructions and narratives also limits inferences regarding direction of effects. While the emphasis in this study was on what children carry over from co-constructions with their parents to other context (i.e. story-stem completion), it is also possible to interpret our findings as showing the reverse. Future studies employing longitudinal designs can be helpful in determining direction of effects.

A second limitation involves the lack of findings regarding aggressive themes. Such themes are salient in some children’s narratives, and several studies have linked them to behavioural problems (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1994; Warren et af., in press; Buchsbaum et al., 1992) or insecure attachment (Main et al., 1985; see Oppenheim and Waters, 1995 for review). Therefore, we expected to find associations between the co-constructions and aggressive themes in children’s MSSB narratives. It is unclear why we did not have such findings, and more work is needed regarding this issue.

In sum, this study has shown the importance of investigating the emotional and interpersonal qualities of parent-hild co-constructions in order to understand their contributions to the development of children’s narratives. We believe that our knowl- edge about parent-child relationships, particularly during the years in which children first enter the world of narrative, will be significantly expanded as we appreciate more fully the role of narrative cons~ction pl-oceses.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Network for Early Childhood Transitions, and conducted while the first author was a postoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Dr Emde was also supported by NIMH project grant MH-22803 and NIMH Research Scientist Award KO2-MH36808, and Dr Wamboldt was supported by NIMH Physician Scientist Award Kll-MH00607.

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160 D. Oppenheim, R. N . Emde and F. S. Wamboldt

APPENDIX

MacArthur Story-Stem Battery Note. Stems are described for males. Names and gender of child characters are female when subjects are girls.

1. Spilled Juice ’The family is sitting around the table to drink juice. George is still thirsty and he wants some more juice, so he reaches over and . . . uh-oh, he spilled the juice all over the floor!’

2. Looking for Barney ‘All day long George has been waiting to play with his favorite puppy Barney. When he comes home he asks his mother.’ Child: ‘Can I go out to the yard to play with Barney?’ Mother: ’Sure!’ ’So George goes out to the back yard-but Barney is gone!’

3. Mom‘s Headache ‘Mother and George are watching TV.’ Mother: ‘George, I have such a headache, I have to shut the TV off and lay down. George, could you do something quiet for a while?’ Child: ’Sure Mom, I’ll read a book.‘ ’George’s best friend comes over.’ Friend: ’George, there is this neat TV show on. Can I come in and watch TV with you?’

4. Three‘s a Crowd ‘George is playing with his best friend Dave and Dave’s new ball. George’s little brother comes over.’ Brother: ’Can I play with you?’ George: ‘Sure!’ Dave: ’No wuy‘ if you let your little brother play I won’t be your friend any more!’

5. Hot G r a y Mother: ’I am making some dinner now but it is not ready yet. Don’t get too close to the stove!’ Child: ’Mmm, that looks good, I don‘t want to wait, I’d like some right now!’ (reaches over and spills the hot pot). Child: ‘Ow, I hurt my hand, it hurts!’

6. The Lost Keys ‘Mother and father are standing in the living room and looking at each other in anger.’ Mother: ‘You lost my keys!‘ Father: ’I did not!’ Mother: ’Yes you did. You always lose my keys!‘ Father: ’I did not lose them this time!’

7. Stealing the Candy Bur ‘Here is the store shelf and do you know what is on it? Candy!’ George: ’Candy! Can I have some?’ Mother: ‘NO, you already had one today. Let‘s go home.’ ’George takes one anyway.’ Store keeper: ‘Hey, what are you doing there!‘

8. Departure ‘Mommy and Daddy are going on a trip. The car is parked in front of the house.’ Mother: ’OK boys, Daddy and I are leaving on our trip now. See you tomorrow, Grandma will stay with you.’

9. Reunion ’It’s the next day and Grandma looks out of the window.’ Grandmother: ’Look boys, I think your Mom and Dad are back from their trip. I think I can see their car.’

10. The Bathroom Shelf Examiner introduces a bathroom shelf prop. ‘This is the bathroom shelf where M o m y keeps all the bandaids. George and his brother are playing. Mom comes in.‘ Mother: ‘Children, I need to go next door to the neighbors to return some things but I will be right back. Don’t touch anything on the bathroom shelf, OK?‘ George: ’OK Mom.’ Brother: ‘All right Mom.’ ’George and his brother are playing.’ Brother: ’Ow, I cut my finger, I need a bandaid!’ George: ’OK . . . Oh no-but Mom said not to touch anything on the bathroom shelf!’ Brother: ’But my finger is bleeding!’

11. Exclusion 1 ’Mom and Dad are sitting on the couch talking.’ Father: ’Mom and I would like some time alone. Will you go up to your room and play with your toys? Please shut the door so it is quiet.’

Documents

Associations Between 3-Year-Olds' Narrative Co-Constructions with Mothers and Fathers and Their Story Completions About Affective Themes