Maternal distancing and event memory at 20 months

Abstract

AbstractMaternal distancing strategies (Sigel, 1993 in The Development and Meaning of Psychological Distance, Cocking R, Renninger KA (eds). Erlbaum: Hillsdale, NJ; 141–158) with 20‐month‐olds were analysed during a mother–child interaction in a free play situation. Then, they were related to memory performance of the children as assessed by the elicited imitation paradigm with 4 three‐step sequences of actions (Bauer, Hertsgaard, Child Dev. 1993; 64:1204). The aim of this work was to (1) confirm that the Sigel's model of distancing could be used with very young children under two; (2) study relationships between maternal distancing that stimulate representational competence of the child and memory performance of the children. Results showed two different patterns of correlations depending on the sequence type: for enabling sequences, significant positive correlations were obtained for the first two distancing levels whereas for arbitrary sequences no correlation was found whatever the distancing level. As discussed, the first pattern brings new arguments in support of declarative memory before the age of 2 years and reframes the memory development in a Vygotskyian interactionist perspective. The second pattern of correlations calls for replication and more investigation about the processes implied in memory of very young children for different sequence types. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.