Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure

Abstract

Valid and efficient measures for assessing the quality of parent-child relationships are needed to facilitate research and evidence-based practice with parents. This paper focuses on such a method, namely Five-Minute Speech Sample-Coherence (FMSS-Coherence). In this method, a parent is asked to speak for five uninterrupted minutes about her/his child and their relationship. The resulted narrative is coded for coherence, namely the extent to which the parent provides in the narrative a clear, consistent, multidimensional and well-supported portrayal of the child. FMSS-Coherence is based on attachment research that shows that the coherence of parents' narratives is indicative of the quality of the parentchild relationship and child adjustment. It overcomes the limitations of attachment narrative measures which are typically labor intensive. FMSS-Coherence is less nuanced than extant attachment narrative measures. Yet, studies of families from different cultural backgrounds, across different child ages and in the context of typically developing children as well as children with special needs suggest that coherence can be reliably evaluated using the FMSS procedure. Furthermore, parents' FMSS-Coherence is associated with parenting quality and children's socio-emotional adjustment. Thus, it holds promise for researchers and practitioners who seek a relatively time-and cost-effective method for assessing the coherence of parents' narratives regarding their child. Video Link The video component of this article can be found at https://www.jove.com/video/60025/ 14 , the Parent Developmental Interview 15 and the Insightful Assessment 16,17 , in which parents are invited to narrate regarding their child. Due to their length and costs, the employment of these methods in large-scale research and practice with parents is relatively limited. To overcome this drawback, this paper introduces a new method for assessing the coherence of parents' short narratives elicited using the FMSS procedure.

Thinking about you baby: Expectant parents’ narratives suggest prenatal spillover for fathers.

“…Through the application of the narrative coherence coding scheme (Sher-Censor & Yates, 2010) to narratives of expectant couples about their unborn child, the current study adds to the field by demonstrating that the simple and efficient FMSS coding can be used successfully on prenatal speech samples gathered from mothers and fathers. Though often warm and detailed in nature, these descriptions typically lacked complexity and so were rated as incoherent for almost two thirds of expectant mothers and fathers.…”

“…Audio-recordings of the FMSS were transcribed verbatim and coded by the first and fourth author for narrative coherence using the Sher-Censor and Yates (2010) coding scheme as adapted from the Insightful Assessment scales (Koren-Karie & Oppenheim, 2004). The first four authors adapted the narrative coherence manual to enable its use with prenatal FMSS.…”

“…In sum, our study of 400 expectant first-time parents (i.e., 200 heterosexual couples) had two main goals. Our first aim was to compare the coherence of narratives from expectant mothers and fathers gathered via the FMSS (Sher-Censor & Yates, 2010). Within this, we aim to examine the individual subscales that constitute coherence and to examine within-couple associations in narrative coherence.…”

Gaining a new perspective on the quality of parent–adolescent relationships from adolescent speech samples.

“…Our findings suggest that the FAARS scales provide unique insight into understanding the quality of parent–teen relationships and adolescent outcomes compared with traditional questionnaire assessments. As the FMSS requires participants to talk uninterrupted for 3 min, the speech content is thought to reflect underlying affective attitudes which are difficult to capture using questionnaire measures (Sher-Censor & Yates, 2012). Bullock and Dishion (2007) also argue that warm or critical remarks made during speech samples represent observable affective behaviors; thus, coding adolescent NRS and PRS can be considered a unique form of observational assessment of adolescents’ behavior toward their parents.…”

“…Furthermore, using a measure of perceived parental emotional overinvolvement and criticism, Schmidt et al (2015) also found their FMSS coding scales to be internally consistent and significantly associated with adolescents’ binge eating disorder, which was indicative of strong predictive validity. Finally, the FMSS Coherence Scale (Sher-Censor & Yates, 2012), which assesses the adolescents’ ability to provide a coherent representation of their parent, also demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties in an adolescent sample (Sher-Censor, 2015). Overall, there is good support for the feasibility and usefulness of the FMSS paradigm in measuring adolescents’ affective attitudes toward their parents (Przeworski et al, 2012; Schmidt et al, 2015).…”