title: Content of maternal open-ended questions and statements in reminiscing with their 4-year-olds: links with independence and interdependence orientation in European contexts.
abstract: Mother's open-ended questions and elaborative statements during reminiscing were analysed for their content (child agency, co-agency, non-social, and social context) in three cultural contexts. Participants were 115 mothers and their 4-year-old children: 35 dyads from Berlin, Germany, 42 from Stockholm, Sweden, and 38 from Tallinn, Estonia. Across samples the most prominent content was talk about non-social context followed by co-agency and child agency. Tallinn mothers asked the children to talk about themselves, and Berlin mothers asked the children to talk about themselves together with other people, more frequently than they talked about these contents themselves. The content was related to the cultural orientations of mothers assessed through questionnaires: the Berlin mothers whose independence/ interdependence ratio was higher talked less about other people and asked the children fewer questions about other people; the Stockholm mothers with a higher independence/interdependence ratio talked more about child agency. In Tallinn both correlations existed on a trend level. The results are discussed in the light of common conversational practices and mothers' orientation to independence and interdependence in these cultural contexts.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. pirko@ut.ee
authors.forename: Pirko
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tõugu
authors.forename: Tiia
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tulviste
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Schröder
authors.forename: Heidi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.forename: Boel
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: De Geer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D004957:Estonia; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D009949:Orientation; D013548:Sweden; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology*