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Stories that have not been personally experienced by children and are only told by their parents are called vicarious family stories. An emerging body of literature has shown that vicarious family stories are an important part of children’s narrative ecology. However, to date, only two studies from the same cross-cultural project have examined the role of culture in vicarious family stories. The aims of this study were to examine vicarious mother stories in Turkey and New Zealand (NZ) and to investigate individual variations in national groups with regard to the internalization of cultural orientations (i.e., self-construals). There were 108 Turkish and 79 NZ women in this study. We found that Turkish women’s stories were more thematically coherent and included more social interactions and other-related words than NZ women’s. When reporting reasons for why they thought family members told stories, didactic purposes and expressing emotions were more common reasons for Turkish women, whereas sharing family history and entertainment were more common reasons for NZ women. However, Turkish and NZ women’s vicarious stories were similar in terms of identity connections and affective tone. Unexpectedly, we did not find a significant role of individuals’ self-construals in the link between national groups and vicarious stories. This study contributes to the growing area of research on family narratives by showing the commonalities and differences in the construction of vicarious stories across national groups.

We examined the effectiveness of the video-feedback Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting-Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD) in enhancing maternal sensitivity and decreasing maternal physical intrusive behaviors among Turkish mothers. Mothers (N = 68; M-age = 29.29, SD = 5.20) with their children (M-age = 20.04 months, SD = 6.62) participated in a randomized controlled trial with pre-, post-, and follow-up assessments (N-intervention = 40, N-control = 28). Maternal sensitivity was assessed using the Ainsworth Sensitivity Scale. A coding schema was developed and used to assess maternal physical intrusiveness. The results indicated that mothers in intervention group benefited from the VIPP-SD in both increasing their global sensitivity (d = 0.51, p =.016) and decreasing the frequency of physical intrusive behaviors (d = 0.56, p =.007) compared to mothers in the control group. Overall, the VIPP-SD program appears to decrease the level of physical intrusiveness, in addition to promoting maternal sensitivity among Turkish mothers.

© 2020 Society for Applied Research in Memory and CognitionIn the current study, we examined whether vicarious family stories are linked to family climate and well-being among young, middle-aged, and older adults across two different samples. In total, there were 168 triads of Turkish families (N = 504). Across Sample 1 (written narratives) and Sample 2 (spoken narratives), we found a significant link between family climate and well-being. In addition, participants from Sample 2 who experienced better family climate narrated more coherent family stories. The results also revealed that participants from Sample 1 who rated their stories as more emotionally positive and participants from Sample 2 who included more identity connections in their stories reported higher levels of well-being. Overall, our findings emphasise the links to well-being for family climate and family stories, and highlight the importance of capturing different characteristics of vicarious stories (elicited via different methods) across generations.

This chapter focuses on autobiographical memory development through family conversations about emotionally charged past events. Previous literature usually investigated mother-child pairs’ dyadic memory conversations and showed that mothers provide more and various emotional content when they converse with their daughters. However, we do not know much about how family members talk during these conversations in a more natural and ecologically valid context, where both parents are present. With this aim, we recruited 183 participants (61 mother-father-child triads), who talked together about emotionally charged shared past events. Our findings provide an overview about triadic family reminiscing patterns, as well as each family member’s contribution to the overall composition of family reminiscing.

Bu çalışmanın amacı bağlanma-temelli bir müdahale programı olan Olumlu Ebeveynliği Geliştirmeye Yönelik Video-Geribildirimli Müdahale Programı-Duyarlı Disiplin versiyonunun (Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline, VIPP-SD) Türkiye kültürüne uyarlanması ve anne duyarlığı üzerindeki etkinliğini incelemektir. Çalışmada Ankara ve İstanbul’un görece düşük eğitim ve gelir düzeyine sahip, 9–33 ay arasında çocukları (Nkız = 48, Nerkek = 49) olan 97 anne yer almıştır. Örneklem seçkisiz olarak kontrol ve müdahale gruplarına ayrılmış, müdahale grubunda yer alan 59 anne ile duyarlık ve duyarlı disiplin temalı dört görüşme yapılmıştır. Görüşmelerde annelere daha önceden çocuklarıyla etkileşimlerinin kaydedildiği kısa videolar üzerinden anne duyarlığı konusunda bireysel geribildirimler verilmiştir. Kontrol grubunda yer alan 38 anneyle ise çocuklarının gelişimiyle ilgili dört telefon görüşmesi yapılmıştır. Anne duyarlığı, anne-çocuk etkileşimlerinin kaydedildiği video üzerinden ‘Ainsworth Duyarlık Ölçeği’ ile değerlendirilmiştir. Annelerin duyarlı davranış ve disipline yönelik tutumları ise ‘Duyarlık ve Duyarlı Disipline Yönelik Tutumlar Ölçeği’ ile ölçülmüştür. Bulgular, kontrol grubunda anlamlı bir etki olmadığını, müdahale grubunda ise annelerin hem gözlem ile ölçülen ebeveyn duyarlığında hem de özbildirimle ölçülen duyarlığa yönelik tutumlarında sontest ve izleme aşamalarında anlamlı artış olduğunu göstermiştir. Özbildirimle ölçülen duyarlı disipline yönelik tutumlarda ise anlamlı bir etki bulunmamıştır. Bu bulgular VIPP-SD’nin görece toplulukçu Türkiye kültüründe yaşayan düşük ve orta sosyoekonomik düzeye sahip annelerin duyarlığını artırmada etkili olduğunu göstermektedir.

Parenting attitudes and children’s perception of parenting attitudes influence many different developmental skills of children, especially their social skills. The current study aims to examine the effects of mothers’ parenting attitudes and children’s perception of maternal parenting on children’s emotion recognition skills via the mediator role of children’s perception of parenting attitudes. One hundred and thirty 2nd-grade children and their mothers living in Ankara participated in the study. Kusche Emotion Inventory, Egna Minnen Beträffande Uppfostran Child form (sEMBU-C) were used as measurements for children while EMBU Parent form and a demographic form were used as measurements for mothers. Results showed that children whose mothers were high in emotional warmth got higher receptive emotion scores; while children, whose mothers scored higher in rejection, got lower receptive emotion scores. In addition, children’s perception of their mothers’ emotional warmth predicted the relationship between mother’s own emotional warmth and receptive emotion scores of children positively; while children’s perception of their mothers’ rejection predicted the relationship between mothers’ own rejection and children’s receptive emotion scores negatively. Overprotection had no predictive role in emotion understanding of children. Limitations of the current study and suggestions for future studies were discussed.

Eighty-seven mothers and their four-year-old children from Eastern Turkey (N = 32 pairs), Western Turkey (N = 30 pairs) and the USA (N = 25 pairs) participated in a study of mother-child memory talk as a reflection of mothers' self construal, in view of differences in the function of memory talk across cultures. Mother-child pairs were audio-recorded while talking about shared past and anticipated future events. Mothers completed the Balanced Integration-Differentiation questionnaire measure of self-construal and were scored as high or low on individuation and relatedness orientations. Mothers' memory and future talk showed similar patterns of cultural differences: American mothers provided the most voluminous, descriptive and elaborative talk, while Eastern Turkish mothers showed the highest level of repetitiveness, and Western Turkish mothers' talk fell in between. Children's memory talk was similar across cultures. In all cultures, mothers who scored high on both individuation and relatedness (balanced self-construal subtype) engaged in more voluminous and contexted memory talk, and individuation was associated with more elaborative talk about future events. Results are discussed in light of literature on cultural differences in self-construal and memory function.

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between greenery around children's homes and their self-regulation skills through the mediator role of nature connectedness. The moderator role of perceptual sensitivity in the relationship between greenery and nature connectedness was also examined. Two hundred and ninety-nine children aged between 8 and 11 years old and their mothers participated in the study. The results indicated that the relationship between greenery and emotional and cognitive regulation was mediated by nature connectedness. However, nature connectedness did not mediate the relationship between greenery and behavioral regulation. The results also revealed that children's perceptual sensitivity was positively associated with nature connectedness. However, the mediation was not moderated by perceptual sensitivity, which means the indirect effect of greenery on emotional and cognitive regulation through nature connectedness did not depend on perceptual sensitivity.

This study aimed to examine mother-child dyads’ unshared memory conversations in relation to mothers’ self-construals and romantic attachment styles in Turkish cultural context. Conversations of 32 mothers and their four-year-old children were recorded from the time mothers picked their children up from daycare until they reached their homes. Children were unaware of the study/recording and mothers were wearing a pendant attached to a digital voice recorder. All transcriptions were screened both for unshared and shared past references, and only past references were coded for elaborativeness and repetitiveness. All coded utterances of unshared and shared past were divided by the total amount of time of the conversation in order to equalize the variance. Findings revealed that mothers who had a more individuated self-construal and avoidant attachment style, who were older, and whose children were also older, were more elaborative in unshared past references; yet there were no significant results on maternal elaborativeness in shared past references, or on maternal repetitiveness at all. When unshared and shared past references were collapsed, same set of results were revealed, except for the child’s age. Furthermore, older mothers with more related self-construals used more maternal repetitiveness in these collapsed past references. The current study revealed that maternal self-construals and avoidance predicted maternal elaborativeness in unshared past conversations at the time of the reunion after a long day. The current study also allowed an important extension of research on mother-child memory conversations beyond Western families. Finally, controversial findings on avoidance were considered to shed light on the cultural dimensions of attachment theory.