CHILD-INITIATED CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE PAST AND MEMORY PERFORMANCE BY PRESCHOOLERS

This study examined the effect of parent-child conversations on memory performance by 3- to 4-year-old children. Ten boys and 10 girls parti cipated in a unique event without their parents present. Parents provi ded diary records of the frequency and content of child-initiated conv ersations about the event over a 1-week retention interval. The childr en were interviewed by an experimenter at the end of the 1-week delay. All children initiated a conversation with their parent(s) about the event at least once, providing highly detailed and accurate informatio n about that event. There was a significant relation between the amoun t of information children reported to their parents and the amount of information they reported to the experimenter. Children did not, howev er, report a stable core of information in these two contexts; approxi mately half of the information children reported to the experimenter h ad not been discussed with their parents. These findings have importan t theoretical implications for current views of childhood amnesia and important practical implications for interpreting children's verbal re ports in clinical and legal settings.