Narrating transgressions in adolescence: a longitudinal study

The relationship between parent-child elaborative reminiscing and children’s socioemotional development is well-established (see Salmon & Reese, 2016 for a review). In particular, a previous longitudinal study trained mothers to reminisce more elaboratively with their toddlers (Reese & Newcombe, 2007). This is a follow-up study of that sample which focused on 15-year-olds’ narratives of transgression events. It addressed three questions: 1) How are adolescents in New Zealand narrating their transgressions?; 2) To what extent do adolescents’ narratives of transgressions vary as a function of their mothers’ intervention condition and as a function of their own gender?; and 3) How do adolescents’ narratives of transgressions vary as a function of early childhood conversations about misbehaviours with mothers? Data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Overall, adolescents narrated ‘mild’ transgressions yet included a great deal of emotional detail. The coherence of their narratives was typical for their age. There were overall effects for both intervention and gender on adolescents’ narratives. Adolescents whose mothers were trained to reminisce more elaboratively told more coherent narratives and explained their emotions more than did adolescents in the control condition. There were also associations between gender and narrative coherence and emotion talk, with adolescent girls telling more coherent narratives and including more emotion talk in their narratives than boys. Significant associations were found between mother-child conversations about misbehaviour in early childhood and adolescents’ narratives of transgressions. When dyads talked more about emotions and explained their emotions more in early childhood, adolescents 12 years later talked more about emotions, explained emotions more and talked more positively about themselves and others. This pattern was stronger for participants in the intervention condition and particularly for boys. Emotion talk and narrative coherence are known to be linked to well-being, hence these findings and their clinical application are worthy of further investigation