Maternal Reminiscing Style and the Development of Autobiographical Memory in Children: The Impact of Auditory Comprehension

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  • February 26, 2019
Creator
  • Veazey, Claire A.
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Abstract
  • A great amount of past research has revealed the positive impact that an elaborative maternal reminiscing style has on the development of autobiographical memory in children. However, this work has been limited to populations of children with typically developing language skills (Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006). The current study was designed to explore the associations between children’s language comprehension and their autobiographical memory on one hand, and their mothers’ style of reminiscing on the other. Using data from the Durham Child Health and Development Study, 113 children were grouped according to their auditory comprehension (AC) scores (high v. low) when the children were 36 months old. A mother-child reminiscing task was used to measure children’s autobiographical memory elaborations and maternal reminiscing style when children were 36 and 60 months old in order to assess the linkages both concurrently and longitudinally. Analyses revealed that (1) children’s AC at 36 months was significantly correlated with their autobiographical memory performance and maternal reminiscing style at both 36 and 60 months, and (2) autobiographical memory in children and maternal style at both time-points differed significantly as a function of the child’s language comprehension at 36 months. Both concurrently and longitudinally, children with lower language comprehension were likely to have lower autobiographical memory performance and less elaborative mothers. In contrast, children with high language comprehension were likely to have higher autobiographical memory performance and mothers who exhibited a more elaborative reminiscing style. By considering the amount of language that children comprehend, these results emphasize a need to account for child individual differences when examining the relations between maternal reminiscing style and autobiographical memory development over time.
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  • In Copyright
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  • Funding: None
Advisor
  • Ornstein, Peter
Degree
  • Bachelor of Arts
Honors level
  • Honors
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Extent
  • 40

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