Emotion Socialization and Developmental Risk: Interactive Effects of Receptive Language and Maltreatment on Reminiscing

Emotional reminiscing, or mother-child discussion of past emotional experiences, is a critical aspect of emotion socialization that predicts a range of child outcomes and is central to parent-child interventions. Thus, understanding individual differences in emotional reminiscing will advance our ability to identify families at-risk for poor emotion dialogues and to adapt interventions for diverse populations, such as families affected by maltreatment and mothers and children with low language abilities. The present study examined associations among maternal and child receptive language with emotional reminiscing and the moderating role of maltreatment.