Reminiscing and recounting in the preschool years

Talk about past events can be classified as either reminiscing (discussing shared, experiences) or recounting (discussing unshared experiences). Remin iscing may have more of a social memory function whereas recounting may als o be informational. This research focused: on the form of mother-child remi niscing and recounting during the preschool years. Twenty 40-month-old and 20 58-month-old children reminisced and recounted past events with their mo thers. Results showed that mothers who provided more memory information dur ing reminiscing and requested more memory information during recounting had children who reported more unique information about the events. Regardless of:maternal conversational style, however, children reported more unique m emory information during recounting than reminiscing. We discuss these resu lts in terms of the importance of both forms of remembering for autobiograp hical memory development. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.