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

Abstract

Data from a large-scale, longitudinal research study with an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample were utilized to explore linkages between maternal elaborative conversational style and the development of children’s autobiographical and deliberate memory. Assessments were made when the children were aged 3, 5, and 6 years old, and the results reveal concurrent and longitudinal linkages between maternal conversational style in a mother–child reminiscing task and children’s autobiographical memory performance. Maternal conversational style while reminiscing was also significantly related to children’s strategic behaviors and recall in 2 deliberate memory tasks, both concurrently and longitudinally. Results from this examination replicate and extend what is known about the linkages between maternal conversational style, children’s abilities to talk about previous experiences, and children’s deliberate memory skills as they transition from the preschool years to early elementary school years.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank all of the families that participated over the years and the incredible team of research assistants who helped to collect and process these data. The research reported here represents a portion of Hillary A. Langley’s dissertation, carried out under the direction of Peter A. Ornstein.

FUNDING

This work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS-0126475 & BCS-0720660) and by a postdoctoral fellowship provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32-HD07376) through the Center for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to the first author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS-0126475 & BCS-0720660) and by a postdoctoral fellowship provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32-HD07376) through the Center for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to the first author.