Associations between 3-year-olds' narrative co-constructions with mothers and fathers and their story completions about affective themes

Oral narratives are important developmental attainments for young children, and they provide them with a new mode for organizing personal experience. Narratives are not only individual constructions, however; they are also shaped and transformed by parent-child transactions. In this study the relations between mother- and father-child co-constructions of a narrative involving emotional themes and the emotional organization of children's narratives obtained using the MacArthur Story-Stem Battery (MSSB) were investigated. The results showed associations between both mother- and father-child co-constructions and children's MSSB narratives. In addition, the findings highlighted the dyadic aspects of co-constructions and the importance of taking into consideration children's co-constructions with both parents.