Carole Peterson

Parental Reminiscing About Positive and Negative Events

We examined how 67 parent-child dyads talked about 2 emotionally laden events: an injury resulting in emergency room treatment and an individually nominated, positively valenced experience. Group differences were found in parental reminiscing between positive and negative events such that parents asked a higher proportion of open-ended memory questions in conversations about negative experiences and a higher proportion of yes-no questions in conversations about positive experiences. Also, parents focused more on emotion when discussing positive experiences with their children and more on causal explanations during the negative conversations. However, individual parents were consistent across event types in both reminiscing style and content. Finally, parental reminiscing style was correlated with childrens recall for both types of events such that parents with an elaborative style had children who reported more new information during the conversations. Implications for children coping with stressful experiences as well as future research are discussed.

Parental styles of narrative elicitation: effect on children's narrative structure and content

Two contrastive studies of personal experience narration in two mother-child pairs are reported. The relationship between patterns of narrative elicitation and the childrens developing narrative skill are investigated. Three sets of data were analysed: mothers utterances during mother-child elicitation, childrens spontaneously provided contextual orientation in narratives elicited by a neutral researcher when the children were between 27 and 44 months of age, and the overall structure of the childrens narratives at age 44 months. The two mothers differed substantially in the kinds of questions they asked: one focused on context (i.e., who, where, when, what and why), while the other emphasized event elaboration (i.e., what happened). The formers child was more likely to spontaneously include contextual orientation but showed less sophisticated plot structure. In contrast, the narratives of the second child showed better structural organization although she spontaneously included less contextual information. These results are discussed in terms of Vygotskian theory.

How Can I Remember When "I" Wasn′t There: Long-Term Retention of Traumatic Experiences and Emergence of the Cognitive Self

Abstract In this article, we focus on two issues, namely, the nature and onset of very early personal memories, especially for traumatic events, and the role of stress in long-term retention. We begin by outlining a theory of early autobiographical memory, one whose unfolding is coincident with emergence of the cognitive self. It is argued that it is not until this self emerges that personal memories will remain viable over extended periods of time. We illustrate this with 25 cases of young children′s long-term retention of early traumatic events involving emergency room treatment. On the basis of both qualitative (case profiles) and quantitative (analysis of covariance) analyses, we conclude that (a) very young children (under the age of 2 years) retain limited memories for events which they commonly express behaviorally, (b) coherent autobiographical memories are not constructed until the child develops a cognitive sense of self (on average, at 24 months of age), (c) autobiographical memories for traumatic events are essentially no different from those for nontraumatic events, (d) stress is only related to long-term retention inasmuch as it is one variable that serves to make an event unique, and (e) like nontraumatic events, traumatic memories lose peripheral details during the retention interval and retain the central components of the event. These results are discussed both in terms of their implications for theories of early autobiographical memory as well as the ways in which we might differentiate implanted (or false) memories and authentic memories for traumatic events.

Children's Memory for Medical Emergencies: 2 Years Later.

Long-term recall of medical emergencies (including both injury and hospital treatment) by 2- to 13-year-olds was assessed 2 years after injury. Event identity was important: Children recalled injury details better than hospital treatment. Ninety-six children were interviewed 3 times prior to the 2-year recall; amount recalled decreased only for hospital treatment details, although accuracy of recall decreased for both injury and treatment. Twenty-one children were interviewed only twice prior to the 2-year interview. An extra interview 1 year after their injury had little effect on how much older children recalled about both injury and treatment or how much younger children recalled about injury details, but it helped younger children recall the less memorable hospital event. The extra interview also helped all children maintain accuracy when recalling hospital details but was unnecessary for the more memorable injury event. Implications for childrens testimony are discussed.

Memory for Medical Emergencies Experienced by 1- and 2-Year-Olds.

Children (13-18 months, 20-25 months, and 26-34 months) who had experienced trauma injuries were recruited in a hospital Emergency Room and subsequently interviewed about them within days (if verbal) and after 6, 12, and 18 or 24 months. The youngest children demonstrated little long-term verbal recall, whereas a few children in the intermediate group, who could not narrate about past events at time of injury, could verbally recall the target events 18 months later. Most of the oldest children, who had narrative skills at time of injury, demonstrated good verbal recall 2 years later. Illustrative case histories were described. Accuracy of recall was low for the youngest children, and although the majority of older childrens recalled information was accurate, there were still many errors.

The who, when and where of early narratives.

To be well understood, narratives need to be embedded within appropriate contextual information. The early development of key orientation (participants, location and time) was traced with an 18-month longitudinal study of real-experience narratives produced by 10 children aged approximately 2-3;6. Listener knowledge or inference was required to decode most named participants and many were not specified at all. There was no developmental improvement. Orientation to WHEN was rare at first and involved formula words indiscriminately applied. There was steady developmental improvement in frequency as well as differentiation of time references. WHERE information was more common at all ages, particularly when the narrated events occurred away from home. It also showed developmental improvement, but only for away-from-home locations. Overall, very young children can produce narratives in an unscaffolded context to adults unfamiliar with their experiences. The potential role of parental scaffolding in teaching orientation skills is discussed.

Children’s long-term memory for autobiographical events☆

Abstract Autobiographical memories not only capture our past, they also help define who we are. In this article, the origins of children’s autobiographical memories are first traced, considering both research on infantile amnesia (which shows limited memory for early life events) as well as the perspective emerging from studies of young children’s memory skills (which shows surprisingly long-term memory competence by 1- and 2-year-olds). The review then focuses on empirical investigations of children’s long-term memory for autobiographical events, dividing studies into those that investigated delays of 1–2 years from those assessing memory after at least 4 years. Although some studies show substantial memory decrements with increased delays, a few studies have documented remarkably robust recall after a number of years. Factors that might contribute to the long-term retention of some events are briefly considered, and implications are drawn for relevant questions that the courts are asking about children’s memory abilities.

Narrative Skills and Social Class

Narratives play an important role in education, for pragmatic and theoretical reasons. Narrative skills of four-year-old children are hypothetically important for later school success. This research investigated the relationship between specific narrative skills and social class in a culturally and racially homogeneous sample, focusing particularly on narratives of economically disadvantaged children from disorganized households. Both middle-class and economically disadvantaged children (but not economically disadvantaged children from disorganized households) often produced long and informative narratives. In contrast, children from disorganized households were most likely to produce extremely minimal narratives, and even their longer ones tended to be chronologically disorganized and poorly patterned in terms of overall structure. Since narrative is one building block teachers use pedagogically, such differences in the match between child skills and school demands at school entrance are cause for concern.

Childhood amnesia in children and adolescents: Their earliest memories

Investigations of childhood amnesia have almost exclusively focused on the earliest memories of adults. Here we investigate the earliest memories of children of 6–19 years old. Parents confirmed the memory events and dated the memories. There were surprisingly few developmental differences between the earliest memories of children. Although 6–9-year-olds recalled earlier events than did older children, there were no differences between older age groups. Memories from all age groups were similar in structure, social orientation, and the nature of the recalled event. However, memories of older children were more likely to involve negative affect. There were also few gender differences, although girls were more likely to recall traumatic or transitional events while boys were more likely to recall play events. Overall, results deepen the paradox of early memory: 6–9-year-olds have verbally accessible memories from very early childhood that then seem to disappear as they get older.

The relationship of parenting stress and child temperament to language development among economically disadvantaged preschoolers

Oral language skills in the preschool years are predictive of childrens later reading success and literacy acquisition, and among these language skills, vocabulary and narrative ability play important roles. Children from low socioeconomic families face risks to their language development and because of threats to these skills it is important to identify factors that promote their development among high-risk groups. This preliminary study explored two potential factors that may be related to language skills in 56 low SES mother-child dyads (children aged 2; 8-4; 10), namely child temperament and parenting stress. Results showed that child temperament and parenting stress were related to childrens oral language skills. Child temperament characteristics that would likely aid social interaction were related to narrative ability and children rated high on emotionality had poorer receptive vocabulary skills. Parenting stress was related to childrens receptive and expressive vocabulary skills. Results are interpreted in terms of the possible mediating role of parent-child interactions in childrens oral language skill development, and future directions for family intervention are discussed.