City of Pittsburgh, Estados Unidos
Introduction: Parent-child reminiscing (i.e., the way in which parents involve children in oral narratives about their emotional past experiences) has been recognized as a strengths-based and culturally responsive context for the investigation of children’s development in Latin American communities. Prior work has identified two Latino parental styles in reminiscing (i.e., constructor and elicitor) and one of these studies has found that elicitor style is related to children’s attention and impulsive control. However, research is consistent about more elaborative or constructor’s parents during reminiscing are predictively associated to children’s socioemotional and cognitive development. Aims: This study seeks to analyze the contribution of constructor and elicitor parents’ styles in relation to both preschoolers’ emotional and cognitive self-regulation. Methods: We videotaped 64 Chilean parent–preschoolers dyads talking about positive and negative past shared experiences. We coded simultaneously children’s gestures, actions and verbal comments using an observational scheme to analyze emotional and cognitive self-regulation indicators. Ordinary Least Squares regression models with robust cluster correction were conducted. Results: Wefound that parent’s constructor style was positively related to children’s emotional self-regulation in positive events (B=1.12, p<.001) and negative events (B=1.34, p<.001). These relations remained even when accounting for important covariates including child age (in month), child vocabulary (i.e., Woodcock–Muñoz Picture Vocabulary subtest), and parent education (dichotomous variable: parent had high school diploma or not). However, parents’ constructor style was not related to children’s cognitive self-regulation in positive events (B=.29, p>.10) or negative (B=.24, p>.10) events. Parent’s elicitor style was not related to children’s emotional or cognitive self-regulation either in positive events or negative events. Discussion: The implications of these findings are discussed within our understanding of how parent-child reminisce contributes to children’s socioemotional development.