Language facilitates event memory in early childhood: Child comprehension, adult-provided linguistic support and delayed recall at 16 months

Abstract

Adult-provided supportive language facilitates memory for the past in preverbal and verbal children. Work conducted with 18-month-olds indicates that children benefit from supportive adult language when tested after a 4-week delay but not when tested immediately after sequence demonstration; moreover, findings reveal that supportive language provided only at test may be more facilitative of recall after a delay relative to supportive language provided only at encoding. In the present study, we examined whether child language comprehension abilities moderated the extent to which preverbal children benefitted from supportive language provided at encoding and test. The findings indicated that child language comprehension and supportive language provided at encoding were unassociated with performance at baseline or immediate imitation; however, the moderating effect of child language comprehension on adult-provided supportive language at encoding and test was observed after a 1-week delay. Correlations revealed continuous associations between general comprehension scores and recall performance after the 1-week delay on sequences presented in the most supportive condition at encoding. Taken together, the presented findings reveal that the complex interplay between language and cognition is established in early childhood, with foundational relations emerging before children are capable of verbally reporting on the past.

Keywords:

• Language
• Comprehension
• Memory
• Infant
• Child

The completion of this research was supported by start-up funds provided by the University of California-Irvine to the first author. We wish to thank the participants and their families who contributed to this research as well as to members of the UCI Memory and Development Lab for their assistance with data collection and coding.

We also thank JoAnn Prause for her assistance with conducting the reported regression analyses and two anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Portions of these data were presented at the 7th biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Memphis, TN.

The completion of this research was supported by start-up funds provided by the University of California-Irvine to the first author. We wish to thank the participants and their families who contributed to this research as well as to members of the UCI Memory and Development Lab for their assistance with data collection and coding.

We also thank JoAnn Prause for her assistance with conducting the reported regression analyses and two anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Portions of these data were presented at the 7th biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Memphis, TN.

Notes

¹ A supplemental regression analysis was conducted using XTMIXED in STATA to determine whether the continuous measure of child language comprehension on the MCDI moderated the effect of supportive adult-provided language at encoding on recall after the 1-week delay controlling for infant sex. The results revealed a significant three-way interaction amongst the included factors: χ²(6) = 6.96, p = .03. Additional follow-up analyses conducted by phase revealed that the significant association between language comprehension and condition was maintained only when examining performance before the provision of the specific verbal prompt: χ²(2) = 8.42, p = .01. As such, these analyses including continuous language comprehension replicated that interactions that are reported for target actions in the text.