YOUNG CHILDRENS EVENT RECALL - ARE MEMORIES CONSTRUCTED THROUGH DISCOURSE

The ways in which event memories may be reconstructed or transformed t hrough discussion with others is a critical question both for understa nding basic memory processes and for issues concerning legal testimony . In this research, white middle-class preschool children were intervi ewed first by their mothers and then by a female experimenter about pe rsonally experienced events when they were 40, 46, 58, and 70 months o f age. Analyses indicated that at all four time points children only i ncorporated about 9% of the information initially recounted by the mot her into their independent recall of the event with the experimenter. Moreover, children only repeated about 20% of the information they the mselves recalled across the two interviews. Additional analyses indica ted that information mutually discussed by the mother and child was no more likely to be incorporated or repeated when recalling the event w ith the experimenter than information not mutually discussed. These re sults indicate that young children's personal memories are not so frag ile that they easily incorporate information provided by another into their own recall. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.