Catherine A. Haden

Mother-Child Conversations About the Past: Relationships of Style and Memory Over Time

This study investigated long-term consistency and change in maternal style for talk about the past and relationships of those styles with childrens memory participation. Nineteen white, middle-class mother-child dyads talked about shared past events at four time points: when children were 40, 46, 58, and 70 months of age. Across the four time points, individual mothers could be consistently classified as high elaborative (e.g., they elaborated on event information much more often than they repeated their requests) or low elaborative (e.g., they elaborated less often in relation to their repetitions). However, all mothers became more elaborative over time; children also remembered more over time. Cross-lagged correlations revealed a relationship between maternal elaborativeness at the early time points and childrens later memory responding, but by the later time points, direction of influence between maternal elaborations and childrens memory responding had become bidirectional. These results are framed with respect to the importance of shared past event conversations for the development of childrens autobiographical memory.

Mother – Child Conversational Interactions as Events Unfold: Linkages to Subsequent Remembering

The study reported here was designed to examine linkages between mother-child conversational interactions during events and childrens subsequent recall of these activities. In this longitudinal investigation, 21 mother-child dyads were observed while they engaged in specially constructed activities when the children were 30, 36, and 42 months of age. Analyses of the childrens 1-day and 3-week recall of these events indicated that at all age points, features of the activities that were jointly handled and jointly discussed by the mother and child were better remembered than were features that were either (1) jointly handled and talked about only by the mother, or (2) jointly handled and not discussed. Potential linkages were also explored between incidental memory for personal experiences and deliberate recall of familiar but arbitrary materials. In this regard, childrens recall of the special activities was positively correlated with their recall of objects in a deliberate memory task performed at 42 months.

Coherence of Personal Narratives Across the Lifespan: A Multidimensional Model and Coding Method

Personal narratives are integral to autobiographical memory and to identity, with coherent personal narratives being linked to positive developmental outcomes across the lifespan. In this article, we review the theoretical and empirical literature that sets the stage for a new lifespan model of personal narrative coherence. This new model integrates context, chronology, and theme as essential dimensions of personal narrative coherence, each of which relies upon different developmental achievements and has a different developmental trajectory across the lifespan. A multidimensional method of coding narrative coherence (the Narrative Coherence Coding Scheme) was derived from the model and is described here. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by its application to 498 narratives that were collected in six laboratories from participants ranging in age from 3 years old to adulthood. The value of the model is illustrated further by a discussion of its potential to guide future research on the developmental foundations of narrative coherence and on the benefits of personal narrative coherence for different aspects of psychological functioning.

Memory Development or the Development of Memory

For 30 years, the question “What is memory development the development of?” has guided research on childrens memory. As theories and research paradigms have evolved over this period, so too has knowledge of the surprising mnemonic competence of young children and of age-related differences in memory performance. Never the less, there are serious limits to current understanding of the development of memory. Indeed, there have been few investigations of changes over time in the memory skills of individual children, and researchers have yet to shed much light on the more difficult question of “What are the forces that propel the development of skilled remembering?” From our perspective, the answer to this question will require movement toward longitudinal research designs that illuminate the mechanisms that bring about developmental change.

Enhancing building, conversation, and learning through caregiver-child interactions in a children's museum.

The authors adapted an experimental design to examine effects of instruction prior to entry into a childrens museum exhibit on caregiver-child interactions and childrens learning. One hundred twenty-one children (mean age = 6.6 years) and their caregivers were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 conditions that varied according to what, if any, preexhibit instruction the dyads received: (a) building and conversation instruction, (b) building instruction only, (c) conversation instruction only, (d) presentation of models of buildings and conversations without instruction, or (e) no instruction or control. Building instruction included information about triangular cross-bracing. Conversation instruction emphasized the use of elaborative wh-questions and associations. When observed in the exhibit, dyads in the groups that received building instruction included more triangles in their structures than those in the other groups. Caregivers provided with conversation instruction asked more wh-questions, made more associations, and engaged in more caregiver-child joint talk compared with those who received building instruction alone. Type of instruction was further linked to differences across conditions in the engineering content of talk, performance during immediate assessments of learning, and childrens memory following 1-day and 2-week delays.

Elaborative Talk During and After an Event: Conversational Style Influences Children's Memory Reports

An experimental design was utilized to examine the effects of elaborative talk during and/or after an event on childrens event memory reports. Sixty preschoolers were assigned randomly to one of four conditions that varied according to a researchers use of high- or low- elaborative during- and/or post-event talk about a camping event. In a memory conversation 1 day after the event, children who were engaged in high-elaborative during-event talk and those whose memory conversation featured high-elaborative post-event talk reported more information than children in low-elaborative during- or post-event talk groups. Moreover, 3 weeks later, when a standard memory interview was conducted with all children, high-elaborative during-event talk influenced the childrens memory reports.

2.37 – The Development of Skilled Remembering in Children

This chapter provides an overview of children’s abilities to remember, beginning with a treatment of behavioral indicators of nonverbal memory performance and then emphasizing the emergence and growth of verbal skills for reporting personally experienced events and making use of deliberate memory strategies. The work summarized here documents two pervasive themes in the literature: the surprising competence of young children’s memory on the one hand and clear age-related differences in performance on the other. The discussion also emphasizes gaps in what is known about the ways in which early abilities give way to later skills as well as the factors that serve to bring about developmental change.

Cracking the Code: Using Personal Narratives in Research

The use of personal narratives in research across the field of psychology has dramatically increased in recent years. In studies spanning a wide range of topics, personal event narratives have provided especially valuable insights into the processes and products of cognitive development. This article offers a guide for researchers who might use personal narratives in research currently or in the future. Issues and best practices surrounding collecting, transcribing, and coding personal narratives are presented. Practical challenges, commonly used methods, and recommended guidelines are described. Illustrations of different types of personal narrative coding systems are offered. The article also highlights benefits of and resources for conducting personal narrative research.

The Development of Children’s Early Memory Skills

A multitask battery tapping nonverbal memory and language skills was used to assess 60 children at 18, 24, and 30 months of age. Analyses focused on the degree to which language, working memory, and deliberate memory skills were linked concurrently to childrens Elicited Imitation task performance and whether the patterns of association varied across the different ages. Language ability emerged as a predictor of immediate Elicited Imitation performance by 24 months of age and predicted delayed performance at each age. In addition to the contributions of language, childrens abilities to search for and retrieve toys in the deliberate memory task were associated with their immediate Elicited Imitation performance at each age. In addition to language, working memory was positively associated with aspects of both immediate and delayed performance at all ages. The extent to which it was possible to replicate and extend previous cross-sectional work in this longitudinal study is discussed.

Cebrospinal fluid study of cannabinoid users and normal control subjects

CSF from cannbinoid users was examined and then compared to CSF parameters in age- and sex-matched normal control subjects