Narrative Skills, Gender, Culture, and Children’s Long-Term Memory Accuracy of a Staged Event

ABSTRACT

This study examined the extent to which school-aged children’s general narrative skills provide cognitive benefits for accurate remembering or enable good storytelling that undermines memory accuracy. European American and Chinese American 6-year-old boys and girls (N = 114) experienced a staged event in the laboratory and were asked to tell a story from a picture book that accessed their narrative skill. Children were interviewed about the staged event 6 months later to assess memory accuracy. Greater narrative skill when storytelling was associated with decreased free recall and recognition memory accuracy for the staged event. In free recall responses, this effect was driven by an increase in the likelihood that inaccurate details would be included in responses from children with better general narrative skills. For girls only, narrative skill predicted poorer recognition accuracy. Girls were also more language-proficient and provided more correct details in free recall than did boys. Chinese American children were more accurate than European American children when responding to recall prompts due to less frequent provision of incorrect details, particularly in girls. Findings are discussed in light of the roles of socialization in memory-reporting accuracy.

Acknowledgments

Gratitude is extended to the families who participated in this study and the undergraduate research assistants who helped with data collection and coding.

Funding

This research was supported in part by funding awarded to the second author by the National Science Foundation (Grant BCS-0721171).

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by funding awarded to the second author by the National Science Foundation (Grant BCS-0721171).