Linking Parent-Child Conversations to Kindergarteners’ Autobiographical Memory Skills and Deliberate Strategy Use

Jennifer L. Coffman1, Dana M. Conlin1, Taylor T. Thomas2, Kesha N. Hudson2, Abigail R. Ward2, Alex Bailey2, Jennifer Shelton2, and Peter A. Ornstein2

University of North Carolina at Greensboro1 and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill2

INTRODUCTION MEASURES RESULTS RESULTS

• Past research has indicated that the ways parents and children Mother-Child Reminiscing Task: MRM (Reese, Haden, & Fivush, 1993)
Parent Elaborations and Children’s Autobiographical Memory Parent reminiscing style was associated with children’s deliberate memory skills.
reminisce about past events and create shared narratives are • Each mother was asked to choose two novel, shared, one-time events
important for the development of autobiographical memory (Reese et to talk about with their child in whatever way felt natural for them. • Children’s autobiographical memory elaborations differed as a function of • Children’s sorting at the fall baseline trial did not differ as a function of their parents’ conversational style.
al., 2011). their parents’ style, such that children of high elaborative parents reported more
• These conversations were audio-recorded, transcribed and then
detailed recollections than children of parents low in elaboration (F(1, 49)=19.58, • However, children of highly-elaborative parents were more likely to take up instruction in strategic
• Autobiographical memory, or the ability to narrate details of previous coded using Reese, Haden, & Fivush (1993) structural/functional
p<.01). sorting after training than children of low-elaborative parents, as evidenced by higher ARC scores on the
experiences, is suspected to be associated with children’s deliberate coding system (See Table below for example).
generalization trial at Time 1 (F(43,6)=5.35, p=.02).
(or strategic) memory performance and strategy use (Ornstein, Children’s Elaborations
Haden, & San Souci, 2008). Code Definition
Elaborations Statements/questions that added new information
• Previous literature depicts these two as distinct skills and how these *
skills might co-develop and interlink has yet to be fully explored. Repetitions Statements/questions that repeated the same information
However, Ornstein, Haden, and Elischberger (2006) suggested
Confirmations / Confirming or negating something the other said
underlying processes of encoding, storing, retrieving information Negations
from memory, and reporting what was retrieved seem to be involved
in both. Associative Talk Describing past, future, or related events to ones discussed

• In recent literature, Langley, Coffman, and Ornstein (2017) found • Parents’ elaborative open-ended and close ended questions and
evidence that mothers’reminiscing style is associated with children’s statements were tallied and averaged across events to create an
deliberate memory skills, however, knowledge of this relationship is parental elaboration score. Children’s elaboration score was found
still limited. through the same process. Children’s Autobiographical Memory and Deliberate (Strategic) Memory
• Parents and children were classified as high or low elaborative based Time 1 Time 1 Time 2 Time 3
on a median split: • Parental Elaboration Median: 35 Children’s uptake of strategic instruction (deliberate memory) differed as a Baseline Generalization (Winter) (Spring)
SPECIFIC AIMS OF THE STUDY (Fall) (Fall)
• Children’s Elaboration Median: 22 function of their autobiographical memory performance.

In this exploration of the connections between parent-child reminiscing Free Recall with Organizational Training Task: FRT (Moely et al., 1992)
and the development of autobiographical and deliberate memory, we aim Children Low in
•At three time points (Fall, Winter, and Spring) children were asked to Memory Elaborations
to: DISCUSSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
remember 16 line drawings (4 from 4 categories).
1.) Investigate children’s autobiographical memory as a foundational Children High in
• At Time 1, children completed a baseline trial (measuring Memory Elaborations
skill in the development of children’s deliberate memory; • Much remains to be understood about linkages between parent-child reminiscing, children’s autobiographical
spontaneous sorting), a training trial in which they were instructed in
memory, and children’s deliberate memory, especially with regard to the role that parent-child conversations might
2.) Examine parental reminiscing and elaborations on children’s categorical organization, and a generalization trial that served as an
indicator of their abilities to take advantage of this strategic play in the development of children’s strategic efforts. Moreover, little is known about the way in which home- and
later deliberate memory abilities.
instruction. classroom-level factors may contribute interactively to the development of young children’s strategic skills.
At Time 1, children who provided more memory elaborations in the MRM task
•Times 2 and 3 allowed for • In this study, kindergarten children’s autobiographical memory performance differed as a function of their
evidenced more strategic sorting after instruction in the FRT task than did
additional generalization trials. parents’ reminiscing style, as did students’ ability to take up training in an organizational strategy.
children who provided fewer memory elaborations. (F (1, 48)=5.52, p=.23)
METHODS
• Strategic sorting was indexed by • Children exposed to elaborative language at home may enter the classroom with more experience in retrieving and
the Adjusted Ratio of Clustering reporting information than their peers exposed to less elaborative language.
• Data for this study were drawn from an ongoing longitudinal
score, which ranges from -1 Linkages Between Parent-Child Conversations and
investigation of children’s memory and cognitive skills as they • Although it is certainly the case that parents’ language at home may differentially prepare children to take advantage
transition into elementary school. (below chance) to 0 (chance) to 1 Autobiographical and Deliberate Memory of instruction, the lack of sustained differences over the kindergarten year evidenced here suggest the need to
(perfect categorical sorting).
investigate aspects of the classroom that may interact with parental conversational style to facilitate children’s
• Child-, home- and school-level information were collected across the
strategic skills.
kindergarten year.
0.77** Children’s • The larger project from which these data are drawn will allow for the opportunity to expand our understanding of the
• Additional time points are underway, allowing for multi-level Parental Elaborations
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS Autobiographical Memory ways in which characteristics of the home environment, especially those related to the richness of language to
assessments through the beginning of the second grade. Elaborations which children are exposed (e.g., in conversations about past events) may contribute to and perhaps moderate the
impact of exposure to a classroom environment that is rich in teacher language on children’s cognitive outcomes.
Mean Min Max SD
PARTICIPANTS Parental Elaborations 39.56 7.50 119.0 22.59 Children’s 0.30* Children’s Uptake of
Autobiographical Strategic Memory
Children’s Elaboration 25.27 2.0 84.0 16.48 Memory Elaborations Instruction ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Participants were drawn from 3 Time 1 Baseline -0.21 -0.23 0.78 0.14
schools and included ARC Scores
51 kindergarteners: Children’s Uptake of
Time 1 Generalization -0.03 -0.23 1.00 0.43 0.32* We are grateful to the children, families, teachers , and research assistants who make this
Parental Elaborations Strategic Memory
ARC Scores work possible. The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education
• 26 Males, 25 Females Instruction
Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A170637 to the University of
Time 2 ARC Scores 0.06 -0.23 1.00 0.52
• Age Range: 4.93 to 6.43 years North Carolina at Greensboro. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not
Time 3 ARC Scores 0.06 -0.23 1.00 0.50 represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.
*p<.05, **p<.01