The effect of parental reminiscing style on the development of the self concept

Previous research has established a linkage between mothers' style of reminiscing and the age of children's first autobiographical memories, one indicator of the emergence of a sense of self. This suggests that early parent-child conversations about shared past events may be one mechanism influencing children's developing sense of self. This study attempted to provide additional support for the importance of early parent-child conversations by examining the effect of maternal reminiscing style on other indicators of the development of a self-concept, specifically, children's use of personal pronouns. It was hypothesized that mothers who have a higher elaborative to repetitive reminiscing ratio have children who use a greater number of personal pronouns and begin using personal pronouns at an earlier age. Mothers' reminiscing style and their children's use of personal pronouns was analyzed within the context of naturalistic conversations. The effect of the child's gender and the relationship between the child's memory responses and his or her mother's reminiscing style was also examined. In addition, an exploratory analysis on the difference between mothers' and fathers' reminiscing style was also conducted on a small subset of the participants. Transcribed conversations were drawn from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). Results revealed a positive relationship between maternal reminiscing style and children's use of personal pronouns. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that maternal reminiscing style during early childhood may be a mechanism underlying the development of a child's sense of self. Replications of classic findings concerning the relationship between reminiscing and memory and gender differences in mother-child reminiscing were consistent with the literature. No significant differences in reminiscing style were found with respect to parents' gender.