What remains of that day: The survival of children's autobiographical memories across time

Abstract

In this study we investigated the contributions of the content and the coherence of initial event reports to the survival of autobiographical memories during part of the lifespan eventually obscured by childhood amnesia. Over 100 children reported personal experiences when they were 4, 6 or 8 years old, enabling a determination of age-related differences in two aspects of narrative coherence: Theme and chronology. Content was assessed separately through the presentation of directed memory probes. After a 1-year delay, younger children more frequently failed to report target experiences. Multilevel modelling indicated that the survivability of a memory was predicted over and above the child's age by high thematic coherence of the initial memory narrative, but not by the memory content. It is possible that memories described in a highly thematically coherent narrative are indicative of well-integrated event memories, and thus likely to be cued more often, resulting in their long-term survival.

Talking (or Not Talking) about the Past: The Influence of Parent–Child Conversation about Negative Experiences on Children's Memories

“…Children who have experienced elaborative reminiscing early in the preschool period are also more likely to report their memories later to others in the form of detailed and coherent narratives (Haden, Haine, & Fivush, 1997;Reese & Newcombe, 2007). Research on the individual memories that survive the early childhood period pinpoint the narrative coherence of the memory-in particular the development of a theme or main point of the narrative-soon after its occurrence as the most critical predictor of its fate (Morris, Baker-Ward & Bauer, 2010). By the later preschool years, the children of parents who are highly elaborative have internalised an elaborative style of talking about the past that extends beyond the specific event (Reese et al, 1993), such that memories are more likely to be structured in a coherent narrative form.…”

“…It is possible that this elaborative style is operating both at the time of encoding events as well as at retrieval (Ornstein & Haden, 2001). The narrative coherence of the memory then helps it to endure beyond the preschool years (Morris et al, 2010;Peterson, Morris, Baker-Ward, & Flynn, 2014).…”

“…One contributing factor may be the lack of narrative coherence of the child's early memories and limited subsequent revisiting (or reinstatement) of the memory in conversation; as we discussed earlier, narrative coherence helps memories to persist over time (Morris et al, 2010). A second overlapping factor may be that in the context of an avoidant attachment relationship and lack of validation of her feelings and discussion of their causes, the child has developed avoidant coping strategies in which she attempts to ignore or suppress her negative memories (Goodman, Quas, & Ogle, 2010;Marche & Salmon, 2013).…”

Childhood remembered: Reports of both unique and repeated events

“…Overall, the two categories of memories were characterised by greater similarity than difference. To analyse these data, multilevel modelling (MLM) was used in order to control for the nesting of memories within participants (e.g., Morris et al, 2010;Peterson et al, 2014). In each of these analyses, we first conducted a preliminary analysis with no predictors included to determine whether there was sufficient variability between and within subjects to test the hypothesis (e.g., Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002).…”

“…We also expected differences in the emotions associated with the memories. We assumed that for children in stable life circumstances, everyday experiences in childhood consist largely of mildly positive content (e.g., Morris, Baker-Ward, & Bauer, 2010), and that this would be typically true for our sample of college students. Hence, we predicted that repeated memories would be less likely to be accompanied by negative emotion because they were less likely than unique memories to refer to unusual events such as injuries.…”