The role of maternal verbal, affective, and behavioral support in preschool children's independent and collaborative autobiographical memory reports

Abstract

The authors investigated the individual and relative contributions of different aspects of maternal support (i.e., verbal, affective, and behavioral) in relation to children's collaborative and independent reminiscing. Four-year-old children discussed personal past experiences with their mothers and with a researcher. In collaborative recall with their mothers, children's narrative behavior was regulated best by maternal use of specific elaborative components, such as affirmations. In contrast, in children's independent recall, affective and behavioral qualities of maternal support were related to children's memory performance. Specifically, during free-recall, the dimensions of quality of instruction and respect for autonomy were significant predictors of children's narratives. In the context of prompted recall (supported by wh-questions), respect for autonomy was the only significant predictor of children's involvement in the conversations and of the amount of unique content they provided. The findings suggest that different aspects of maternal behavior facilitate different components of children's reminiscing skills, which children might apply depending on demands of the autobiographical memory conversation.

It’s all about location, location, location: Children’s memory for the “where” of personally experienced events

“…Participants completed several tasks during the sessions. The data from some of the tasks are published elsewhere (Larkina & Bauer, 2010, in press; Pathman et al, in press); all of the memory data presented here are unique to this manuscript. Four female experimenters administered the tasks; children were tested by the same experimenter at both sessions.…”

The Socialization of Children’s Memory: Linking Maternal Conversational Style to the Development of Children’s Autobiographical and Deliberate Memory Skills

“…In contrast to mothers who adopt a “low elaborative” conversational style, “high elaborative” mothers generally pose more Wh - questions, make more associations between the event being discussed and other experiences, follow-in more frequently on comments made by their children, and routinely positively evaluate their children’s contributions during the conversation. It has been hypothesized that exposure to early supportive and scaffolded conversations with highly elaborative mothers may “set the stage” for children’s later skills in reminiscing, as well as independent (and unscaffolded) narratives about previous experiences (Larkina & Bauer, 2010). Thus, children of high elaborative mothers are thought to become increasingly skilled in recalling past experiences and in using the narrative conventions of the culture to organize their reports (Fivush et al, 2006).…”

“…Thus, although it seems reasonable that all mothers may adapt to children’s increased skills over time, some mothers are consistently more elaborative relative to other mothers across the preschool years (Fivush et al, 1996; Fivush et al, 2006). Moreover, children of highly elaborative mothers, in turn, come to tell more detailed, elaborated, and coherent narratives of their personal past, with both their mothers and unfamiliar adults, than children of less elaborative mothers (Reese & Fivush, 1993; Fivush et al, 2006; Larkina & Bauer, 2010). That is, the more elaborative mothers are, the more their children recall both concurrently and in conversations at later points in time (e.g., Fivush et al, 2006).…”

Maternal Reminiscing Style: The Sociocultural Construction of Autobiographical Memory Across Childhood and Adolescence

“…Some research suggests that elaborative content and more emotionally imbued affirmations and evaluations might play separable roles in children's developing autobiographical skills. Aspects of maternal reminiscing style that focused more on evaluative components such as affirmations, joint engagement, and autonomy support, which provide a sense of confirmation and validation for the child's contributions, are critical factors in eliciting and maintaining children's participation and skill in autobiographical reminiscing, especially later in the preschool years (Larkina & Bauer, 2010;Reese & Cleveland, 2005;Zaman & Fivush, submitted). Additional research is needed to examine the construct of elaboration more carefully in order to ascertain how maternal reminiscing style is related to children's developing autobiographical memory skills.…”