Can Preschoolers' Narratives Reflect Their Mothers' Emotional Availability?

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From the attachment theory point of view, a child internalizes the representations of self, parent, and relationships through his or her early interaction with the caregiver, and those representations construct an Internal Working Model through which external information is processed. Those representations, that is, Internal Working Models, become the prototype for the pattern of a child's behaviour and relationship with others. In order for children to develop a healthy Internal Working Model, emotional availability of the caregiver, rather than physical availability, is essential. The study focused on 21 non-clinical Japanese preschoolers aged 4 to 5 years, and explored the link between the maternal emotional availability and the child's parental representations. The mother-child interactions in a semi-structural setting were observed, and maternal emotional availability was evaluated with the Emotional Availability Scales (4^<th>.Ed.). Parental representations in the child's mind were assessed through Story Stem Assessment Profile, a story completion task using doll play. It was found that children whose mothers' levels of emotional availability are high have more positive parental representations and less negative representations than the children whose mothers' levels of emotional availability are low. This consistent link between maternal emotional availability and children's parental representations indirectly supports the idea that non-clinical children construct representations of parents consistent with their experiences with their mothers. Moreover, this research implies the usefulness of systematic analysis of children's play and story in order to assess their subjective internal world.
2012-03-30

Can Preschoolers' Narratives Reflect Their Mothers' Emotional Availability?

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