The role of maternal verbal, affective, and behavioral support in preschool children's independent and collaborative autobiographical memory reports

doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2010.08.008

Cognitive Development

Volume 25, Issue 4, October–December 2010, Pages 309-324

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2010.08.008 Get rights and content

Abstract

The authors investigated the individual and relative contributions of different aspects of maternal support (i.e., verbal, affective, and behavioral) in relation to children's collaborative and independent reminiscing. Four-year-old children discussed personal past experiences with their mothers and with a researcher. In collaborative recall with their mothers, children's narrative behavior was regulated best by maternal use of specific elaborative components, such as affirmations. In contrast, in children's independent recall, affective and behavioral qualities of maternal support were related to children's memory performance. Specifically, during free-recall, the dimensions of quality of instruction and respect for autonomy were significant predictors of children's narratives. In the context of prompted recall (supported by wh-questions), respect for autonomy was the only significant predictor of children's involvement in the conversations and of the amount of unique content they provided. The findings suggest that different aspects of maternal behavior facilitate different components of children's reminiscing skills, which children might apply depending on demands of the autobiographical memory conversation.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 30 children (16 females) approximately 4 years of age (M = 4.12 years, SD = 30 days, range = 3.98–4.23 years). Initially, 35 children were drawn from a pool of families who had expressed interest in participating in research at the time of their children's births. Five children were excluded from the analyses because they (a) did not complete all of the tasks of interest (n = 3), (b) participated with their father (n = 1), and (c) had speech problems that made their verbal responses

Preliminary analyses

Event selection. Following Fivush, Haden, and Adam (1995), for an event to be included in analysis, the child was required to provide at least two unique pieces of information about it (i.e., at least 2 content codes). All 30 children met the criterion for all four events talked about with their mothers. Twenty-nine children met the criterion for all four events talked about with the experimenter, and one child met the criterion for three of the four events. The conversational codes were

Discussion

We assessed maternal reminiscing style using two approaches. As in many prior studies (Bauer and Burch, 2004, Haden and Fivush, 1996, Reese and Fivush, 1993), we characterized maternal verbal contributions along dimensions of elaboration. We also extended the research by characterizing the affective and behavioral qualities of support that mothers provided along four observational dimensions. As expected, two rating scales, structure and limit setting and quality of instruction, were related to

References (38)

M.M. Burch et al.
Understanding the emotional past: Relations between parent and child contributions in emotionally negative and non-negative events
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(2004)
E.S. Cleveland et al.
Children's engagement and competence in personal recollection: Effects of parents’ reminiscing goals
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(2007)
M.J. Farrar et al.
Attachment and emotion in autobiographical memory development
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(1997)
R. Fivush et al.
Structure and coherence of preschoolers’ personal narratives over time: Implications for childhood amnesia
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(1995)
E. Reese et al.
Mother–child conversations about the past: Relationships of style and memory over time
Cognitive Development
(1993)
M.B.S. Ainsworth et al.
Patterns of attachment
(1978)
R. Arend et al.
Continuity of individual adaptation from infancy to kindergarten: A predictive study of ego-resiliency and curiosity in preschoolers
Child Development
(1979)
P.J. Bauer et al.
Developments in early memory: Multiple mediators of foundational processes
P.J. Bauer et al.
Using cue words to investigate the distribution of autobiographical memories in childhood
Psychological Science
(2007)
E.S. Cleveland et al.
Maternal structure and autonomy support in conversations about the past: Contributions to children's autobiographical memory
Developmental Psychology
(2005)

J. Cohen et al.

Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences

(1983)

M.S. De Wolff et al.

Sensitivity and attachment: A meta-analysis on parental antecedents of infant attachment

Child Development

(1997)

Egeland, B., Weinfield, N. S., Hiester, M., Lawrence, C., Pierce, S., & Chippendale, K. (1995). Teaching tasks...

M. Erikson et al.

The relationship between quality of attachment and behavioral problems in preschool in a high-risk sample

Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development

(1985)

K. Farrant et al.

Maternal style and children's participation in reminiscing: Stepping stones in children's autobiographical memory development

Journal of Cognition and Development

(2000)

R. Fivush

Voice and silence: Feminist perspectives on autobiographical memory development

R. Fivush et al.

Style and structure in mother–child conversations about the past

Discourse Processes

(1988)

R. Fivush et al.

Elaborating on elaborations: Role of maternal reminiscing style in cognitive and socioemotional development

Child Development

(2006)

R. Fivush et al.

Remembering to relate: Socioemotional correlates of mother–child reminiscing

Journal of Cognition and Development

(2002)

Cited by (47)

Parent–child attachment security is associated with preschoolers’ memory accuracy for emotional life events through sensitive parental reminiscing
2021, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
There is considerable controversy regarding the accuracy and suggestibility of children’s autobiographical memory for emotionally salient life events. Attachment perspectives of autobiographical memory development identify the attachment security of parent–child dyads and parents’ emotional support and coherence during reminiscing with their children as critical mechanisms underlying children’s memory accuracy and suggestibility. In the current investigation, 72 preschool-aged children (M = 4.01 years, SD = 0.85; 44 female) reminisced with their parents about times they felt happy, sad, scared, and angry. Children were then independently interviewed about these experiences by an unfamiliar researcher using free recall, specific questions (i.e., questions about factual details), and misleading questions (i.e., questions suggesting false details). Parents completed an assessment of their children’s attachment security within the parent–child relationship. Results revealed significant indirect effects of parent–child attachment security on children’s memory accuracy through parental sensitive guidance during reminiscing when cognitive (i.e., intelligence) and behavioral (i.e., temperament, behavior problems) covariates were statistically controlled. Parent–child attachment security was positively associated with parental sensitive guidance during reminiscing, which, in turn, was positively associated with the accuracy of children’s independent reports. The findings support attachment perspectives of autobiographical memory by identifying emotionally sensitive and coherent reminiscing as a parenting behavior that explains in part associations between parent–child attachment security and children’s independent memory accuracy for emotional life events.
Intergenerational transmission of autobiographical memory specificity: Indirect effects through maternal reminiscing
2021, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Mother–child reminiscing, particularly maternal sensitive guidance, fosters the development of autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) in both typically developing and maltreated children, yet little is known regarding the processes underlying individual differences in maternal reminiscing that could also relate to child AMS. Emerging evidence has shown that maternal AMS is associated with maternal sensitive guidance in typically developing dyads. We extended this research to the context of maltreatment, a risk factor for impoverished maternal sensitive guidance and reduced AMS in children. In the current study, we evaluated the indirect effect of maternal AMS on child AMS through two dimensions of maternal reminiscing style—sensitive guidance and elaboration—while including parallel pathways between neglect and abuse/emotional maltreatment and child AMS through maternal reminiscing. Participants were 123 neglecting, 30 abuse/emotional maltreating, and 78 demographically matched nonmaltreating mothers and their 3- to 6-year-old children. Results indicated that maternal AMS was indirectly associated with child AMS through maternal sensitive guidance while controlling for associations among neglect, maternal reminiscing, and child AMS, providing evidence for intergenerational transmission of AMS in at-risk dyads. These results advance the understanding of mechanisms underlying both maternal sensitive guidance and child AMS in a low-socioeconomic-status and racially diverse sample.
A Micro-Analytic Approach to Parent-Child Reminiscing Re-submission date: 21-12-2020
2021, Cognitive Development
The reminiscing literature has for decades highlighted the positive effect of the high elaborative reminiscing style on children’s autobiographical memory. However, very little is known about the direct, reciprocal influences of parents’ and children’s utterances on each other. Using a micro-analytic approach, the current study aimed to investigate a) how likely children were to provide memory information directly following parental elaborative, repetitive, and confirming utterance types, and b) how likely parents were to respond to children’s memory information and verbal placeholders with elaborations, repetitions, and confirmations. Eighty-eight (N = 88) mothers and fathers participated in the study with their 4-year-old children. The micro-analyses revealed that children were most likely to provide memory information directly following parental open-ended elaborative and repetitive questions, and positive confirmations. Thus, through their open-ended questions and confirmations parents promoted the reciprocal, joint process of remembering which appeared highly facilitative of children’s autobiographical remembering.
Maternal scaffolding styles and children's developing narrative skills: A cross-cultural comparison of autobiographical conversations in the US and Thailand
2020, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction
Cross-cultural differences in reminiscing styles between American and Thai mothers and their four-year-olds were examined. Twenty-one English monolingual and 21 Thai monolingual mother-child dyads participated in a Prompted Reminiscing task (Task 1). Children also completed a Child Personal Narrative task with the researcher (Task 2). Results from the first task revealed that dyads from the two cultures differed in the elaborateness of their conversations. American mothers adopted a high-elaborative style, characterized by greater use of evaluative feedback and scaffolding strategies including descriptions, extensions, labels, and recasts, compared to their Thai counterparts. Thai mothers adopted a low-elaborative style, evidenced by greater use of directives and requests for repetitions. Similar to their mothers, American children adopted a high-elaborative style compared to their Thai peers. Findings from the second task demonstrated that interlocutor scaffolding influences children's communicative styles. When reminiscing without their mother, American children produced longer narratives than their Thai peers. The present work suggested that maternal elicitation strategies differ across cultures and play a role in shaping children's developing narrative skills. By interacting with more competent social partners, particularly their mothers, children start to internalize culture-specific socialization goals and learn to converse in a culturally-appropriate way as early as preschool.
Coaching in maternal reminiscing with preschoolers leads to elaborative and coherent personal narratives in early adolescence
2020, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Citation Excerpt :
These theories posit a special role for discussing shared past events in which both partners have access to a memory representation for the same event. This research has demonstrated that mothers who discuss past events in an elaborative fashion—especially by asking children open-ended questions containing new information about the events and confirming children’s responses—have children who go on to produce more detailed and more accurate memory accounts themselves over time both with their mothers and with others (e.g., Farrant & Reese, 2000; Haden, Ornstein, Rudek, & Cameron, 2009; Hudson, 1990; Larkina & Bauer, 2010; Peterson & McCabe, 1992; Reese, Haden, & Fivush, 1993). These studies all are correlational, but they have taken into account alternative explanations of the long-term associations between maternal elaborative reminiscing and children’s memory narratives such as maternal education, children’s language development, and children’s earlier language and recall skills.
This long-term follow-up of an early childhood training study (Growing Memories) to promote elaborative reminiscing tested continued effects on mother–child reminiscing and on adolescents’ narrative coherence. Of the original 115 families, 100 participated when their children were 3.5 years of age and 76 participated when their children were young adolescents (M_age = 11.2 years). Mothers and children reminisced about a positive event and a negative event at each timepoint, and adolescents narrated high points and low points. Mothers and children who had participated in the reminiscing intervention in early childhood remained more elaborative in dyadic reminiscing over time. Moreover, adolescents whose mothers had participated in elaborative reminiscing training in early childhood told more coherent low-point narratives (with respect to context and theme) than adolescents of mothers in the control group. These long-term benefits for the quality of mother–adolescent reminiscing and adolescents’ narrative coherence have implications for theories of narrative identity development and for designing interventions in early childhood to foster autobiographical memory, which may help later understanding of difficult life events.
The “fullness of life”: Learner interests and educational experiences
2019, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction
Citation Excerpt :
First-person narratives that ask participants to describe people, places, and events from childhood onwards rely on memory and perceptions that are likely to be selective and varied (Hollway & Jefferson, 2000). Humans are renowned for having little memory of events in the early years; often memories have been created through the stories of events, routines, and people told by significant others, and use of photographs and other artefacts (Bauer, 2006; Larkina & Bauer, 2010). The kinds of stories and memories shared are those that have a sense of “personal involvement and ownership” (Bauer & Fivush, 2010, p. 303) hence suit an approach designed to elicit stories about interests.
It is well-established that personal interests drive motivation and engagement in human endeavours. How might educational settings recognise and tap into these interest-fuelled motivations to promote and extend learning? Where there is a play-based curriculum in early childhood education interests-based approaches may be possible. Such approaches may be more challenging to enact within the more prescriptive curricula, assessment regimes, and accountabilities schooling commonly operates within that perhaps neglect a holistic approach to learning. In a study using narrative methodology in Auckland, New Zealand, young adults described the significant interests they had through their lives, ways these were drawn on—or otherwise—during their education, and their influence on extra-curricular activities, tertiary education, and early career planning. Two illustrative cases point to the significant people, places, and things that shaped the educational experiences and learning identities in the particular historical, social, and cultural contexts each participant grew up in. The paper argues that personal interests are a complex phenomenon that arise from, and develop over time within multifaceted historical, social, and cultural contexts and relationships. It invites deeper definitions of interests common in early childhood education and raises cautions around the ways interests might occupy more attention in schooling.

View all citing articles on Scopus

^☆: The authors thank Evren Güler and Paloma Hesemeyer for assistance in coding; Robyn Fivush and an anonymous reviewer for comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript; and the children and parents who participated in this study. Support for this research was provided by NICHD HD28425 and HD42483 to Patricia J. Bauer, and by Emory University.

View full text

The role of maternal verbal, affective, and behavioral support in preschool children's independent and collaborative autobiographical memory reports☆

Abstract

Section snippets

Participants

Preliminary analyses

Discussion

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Cognitive Development

Patterns of attachment

Continuity of individual adaptation from infancy to kindergarten: A predictive study of ego-resiliency and curiosity in preschoolers

Child Development

Developments in early memory: Multiple mediators of foundational processes

Using cue words to investigate the distribution of autobiographical memories in childhood

Psychological Science

Maternal structure and autonomy support in conversations about the past: Contributions to children's autobiographical memory

Developmental Psychology

Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences

Sensitivity and attachment: A meta-analysis on parental antecedents of infant attachment

Child Development

The relationship between quality of attachment and behavioral problems in preschool in a high-risk sample

Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development

Maternal style and children's participation in reminiscing: Stepping stones in children's autobiographical memory development

Journal of Cognition and Development

Voice and silence: Feminist perspectives on autobiographical memory development

Style and structure in mother–child conversations about the past

Discourse Processes

Elaborating on elaborations: Role of maternal reminiscing style in cognitive and socioemotional development

Child Development

Remembering to relate: Socioemotional correlates of mother–child reminiscing

Journal of Cognition and Development