Mother – Child Conversational Interactions as Events Unfold: Linkages to Subsequent Remembering

Abstract

The study reported here was designed to examine linkages between mother-child conversational interactions during events and children's subsequent recall of these activities. In this longitudinal investigation, 21 mother-child dyads were observed while they engaged in specially constructed activities when the children were 30, 36, and 42 months of age. Analyses of the children's 1-day and 3-week recall of these events indicated that at all age points, features of the activities that were jointly handled and jointly discussed by the mother and child were better remembered than were features that were either (1) jointly handled and talked about only by the mother, or (2) jointly handled and not discussed. Potential linkages were also explored between incidental memory for personal experiences and deliberate recall of familiar but arbitrary materials. In this regard, children's recall of the special activities was positively correlated with their recall of objects in a deliberate memory task performed at 42 months.

Communication Breakdowns and Repair Strategies of Children with Down Syndrome

“…Thirty-eight mother-child dyads (DS = 18; TD = 20) completed the protocol for younger children, and 32 dyads (DS = 16; TD = 16) completed the protocol for older children. Mothers of children at younger levels were first provided with picnic-themed toys and asked to go on a pretend picnic with their child, based on task used by Haden et al (2001) for TD children ages 30 to 42 months and their mothers. The dyad was then provided with three boxes (one with drawing and coloring materials, one with a cash register and dress-up clothes, and one with blocks) and instructed to play for about 15 min, spending as long as they desired with the items in each box.…”

The effect of language cues on infants’ representational flexibility in a deferred imitation task

“…As expected, 15- Why do verbal cues facilitate the memory abilities of young infants? Elaborative verbal information can serve to highlight which aspects of an event are important and interesting to recall, which in turn influences the content, quality, and organization of the child's subsequent verbal report (e.g., Haden et al, 2001;McGuigan & Salmon, 2004;Tessler & Nelson, 1994). It is possible that verbal information may have the same impact on the structure and organization of non-verbal recall.…”

“…Preschool children's verbal reports of previous experiences are influenced by their language abilities at the time of the event (Simcock & Hayne, 2002) as well as the discussions they have during or after the event (e.g., Haden, Ornstein, Eckerman, & Didow, 2001;McGuigan & Salmon, 2004Tessler & Nelson, 1994). For example, elaborative talk (compared to empty, uninformative talk) by an experimenter during the event facilitates 3-to 5-year olds verbal recall two weeks after participating in a staged novel event (McGuigan & Salmon, 2004).…”

With eyes to the future: A brief history of cognitive development

“…Children play an active role in this process of memory development. Research has shown that children's memory for an event is better when the event is talked about by the child and another person, such as the mother, than when the event is only talked about by another person or not discussed (Haden, Ornstein, Eckerman, & Didow, 2001). Research has also demonstrated that children use memory strategies in conversation with an unfamiliar adult similar to what was previously used with their mothers (Lange & Carroll, 2003), suggesting that parent-child conversation has implications for when children remember events on their own.…”