About the project

Positive parenting interactions are critical for children’s early psychological development. Growing Up in New Zealand is unique among large cohort studies, having collected observational measures of parent-child interaction at multiple time-points. Growing Up has conducted in-depth coding of transcribed audio recordings for 1,500 participants from the 8 year data collection wave (2 Masters and 1 PhD student - IA 20\1009). IA 20\1009 also has an approved extension (including an additional 2 x Honours and 1 x Masters student). The existing approved research questions are listed at the end of this section. To date, this project has resulted in six completed theses (across four institutions) and the following publications:

Swearingen, I., Reese, E., Garnett, M., Peterson, E., Salmon, K., Atatoa Carr, P., ... & Bird, A. (2023). Maternal reminiscing during middle childhood: Associations with maternal personality and child temperament from the Growing Up in New Zealand cohort study. Developmental Psychology.

Garnett, M., Reese, E., Swearingen, I., Peterson, E., Salmon, K., Waldie, K., ... & Bird, A. (2023). Maternal Reminiscing and Children’s Socioemotional Development: Evidence from a Large PreBirth Longitudinal Cohort Study, Growing Up in New Zealand. Journal of Cognition and Development, 24(5), 678-703.

Bird, A., Reese, E., Salmon, K., Waldie, K., Peterson, E., Atatoa-Carr, P., & Morton, S. (2023). Maternal depressive symptoms and child language development: Exploring potential pathways through observed and self-reported mother-child verbal interactions. Development and Psychopathology, 1-14.

Peterson, E., Sharma, T., Bird, A., Henderson, A. M.E., Ramgopal, V., Reese, E., & Morton, S. M. B. (2024). How mothers talk to their children about failure, mistakes and setbacks is related to their children's fear of failure. British Journal of Education Psychology, 1-19.

Russell, S., Bird, A. L., Salmon, K., Morton, S. M. B., Atatoa Carr, P. E., Waldie, K., Peterson, E., & Reese, E. (in press). From Infancy to eight: How early maternal mental health, reminiscing and language shape children’s mental health. Development and Psychopathology.

The current proposal is an extension to this existing application. As noted above, just under 1/3 of the possible recorded parent-child conversation (n = 1500) have been transcribed and coded to date. This proposal extension will utilise the already coded data and will also transcribe and code the remaining parent-child conversations. Automatic transcription software has advanced since the original data was collected, which will allow for a more efficient transcription process

(we will use local desktop version of Microsoft Word transcription). We will also engage future PhD, Masters and Honours students to check the transcription and code the data (these students will be added to the research team via DAC application in due course). The additional transcription and coding of the full sample will utilise this rich and unique data and will allow specific within-group analysis as follows:

1. Social disagreement discussions: how does parent discussion of specific strategies relate to child social functioning across time (8 year and 12 year)

2. Injury disagreement discussions: do high quality parent discussions about injury moderate socio-emotional outcomes for children who have experienced chronic physical health problems?

3. Disappointment discussions: Building on Peterson et al. (2024) we will examine how parent discussion of setbacks relate to children's social, emotion and academic functioning across time. This will also allow for more refined coding of the specific type of setback (i.e., academic vs sporting disappointment).

Existing approved research questions / projects as part of IA 20\1009:

1. How is ‘high-risk’ parenting associated with parent-child emotion reminiscing?

2. Do parent-child emotion conversations mediate an association between maternal experience

of mental health difficulties and children’s early mental health symptoms at age 8?

3. What are the emotion reminiscing strengths among children from Māori, Pacific, Asian and European families?

4. What are the positive and modifiable features of parent-child emotion reminiscing with children exhibiting externalizing behaviour difficulties?

5. How are child language and parent-child conversation related across time, and what are the implications for children's emotional and behavioural development?

6. Is high quality parent-child reminiscing a resilience factor for children exposed to IPV during childhood?

7. How is parent-child reminiscing related to children's self-concept and emotion understanding among a sub-group of cohort children with reported ASD diagnosis?

8. Do parent-child reminiscing conversations about pain differ for children with a history of medical intervention

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