Elsevier

Cognitive Development

Volume 25, Issue 4, October–December 2010, Pages 325-338
Cognitive Development

Memory for emotional experiences in the context of attachment and social interaction style

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2010.08.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Important dimensions of emotional experiences include the level of arousal elicited and the source of that arousal, yet memory for events differing on these constructs is often compared within and across studies. One important factor for emotional memory is attachment security, which predicts how parents and children relate to each other and to the world around them. The present study investigated differences in 8- to 12-year olds’ recall of emotional stimuli varied in relevance to attachment themes of separation and reunion. Moreover, memory was examined as predicted by children's attachment security, parents’ attachment avoidance and anxiety, and parental elaboration during an interaction about the laboratory experience. Results revealed that recall was best for stimuli involving separation. Moreover, recall for separation stimuli was positively predicted by children's attachment security and parental avoidance, and negatively predicted by parental anxiety and elaborative interaction style. These findings highlight the importance of considering the effect of multiple dimensions of emotional events on children's memory and how contextual factors may differentially predict those memories.

Section snippets

Emotional and attachment-related memory

A large body of research has pointed to the unique nature of memory for emotional events. Specifically, whether referring to an event (stories involving emotional and non-emotional behavior; Davidson, Luo, & Burden, 2001), experimental stimuli (emotional vs. neutral words; Kensinger & Corkin, 2003) or state of mind (Bishop, Dalgleish, & Yule, 2004), memory is generally increased for emotional as compared to neutral stimuli. Multiple theoretical approaches exist to explain the unique nature of

Individual differences in attachment and memory

In addition to important characteristics of the event, how the child processes, stores, and retrieves the event is modulated by individual differences. Specifically, individual differences in the organization of children's attachment system result from the developmental and relational history of the child. This attachment organization is activated by events high in attachment relevance and will play a role in how the events are processed (Alexander & O’Hara, 2009). This may occur through

Parent–child interaction as developmental context

Another important contribution to the context in which children develop is the pattern parents use to interact about past events. Parent–child interactions resulting in a greater number of opportunities to practice open communication regarding emotional events have been associated with an increase in children's emotional understanding (DeRosnay and Harris, 2002, Greig and Howe, 2001, Laible and Thompson, 1998, Ontai and Thompson, 2002). Thus, parent–child interaction style may be associated

The present study

The goal of the current study was to identify event characteristics important to children's recall of emotional stimuli matched in arousal but varied in valence and attachment relevance. A second goal was to examine sources of individual difference in children's recall for these different event characteristics. To this end, we assessed children's attachment, parents’ attachment, and parental interaction style. First, it was hypothesized that children would recall more details about negative

Participants

The sample consisted of 42 children (27 female) recruited from the community via flyers and community events. Parents were contacted via phone and those who agreed to participate visited the laboratory on two occasions, where children were tested individually. Based on parent report, children were selected to be strongly right-handed and native English speakers with no known developmental delays. Children ranged in age from 7 to 12 years (M = 9.19 years, SD = 1.33). Parents’ ages ranged from 31 to

Preliminary analyses

Means for target predictor and memory variables are included in Table 1. To examine whether order of stimulus presentation at encoding affected children's memory, a series of analyses of variance (ANOVAs) was conducted and no differences were detected, Fs (1, 39) < 1. Thus, encoding orders are collapsed for further analyses. Next, gender effects were examined. Gender was significantly related to the number of correct details recalled about reunion stimuli, t (39) = 2.06, p < .05, with girls recalling

Discussion

The results underscore the importance of considering the nature of emotional events in predicting variation in memory, in that not all emotional events are recalled in the same way. In addition, qualities of children's developmental context (i.e., primary social relationships) predict recall. An integrated model of emotional memory has been proposed that draws together each of these elements to help explain the historically inconsistent findings on emotional memory. The current results will be

Conclusions

The current findings underscore the need to consider multiple qualities of events, particularly attachment relatedness, when examining children's emotional memory. Further, they add to a growing body of evidence that social contextual factors make important contributions to children's memory about emotional experiences. Despite the theoretical implications of these results, limitations exist. First, the sample was relatively small, particularly for findings involving parental elaboration, and

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    This research was supported by grants to Rosemarie Kraft from the Agricultural Experiment Station at UC Davis. We thank the many undergraduate and graduate research assistants who made this project possible and to Dr. Robyn Fivush for insightful feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. Special thanks go to the families who volunteered their time to participate in this study. For copies of the stimuli, contact the corresponding author.

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