Children's Autobiographical Memory Research Articles

Yes, no, maybe so: Caregiver autonomy support, conversation context, and children's memory performance.

The extant literature on the use of autonomy support during caregiver-child conversations has focused primarily on conversations about fun, shared experiences, with limited consideration of unshared experiences or attention toward the role of conversation context. The present study examined how autonomy support, conversation context, and child age interact to predict 3-to-5-year-old children's disclosure of accurate information when discussing an unshared past event with their caregiver and an experimenter. Dyads (N = 111) were recruited from two locations (Miami, Florida and Orange County, California) by research recruitment firms. Children completed a standardized activity alone and then discussed the activity with their caregiver. The context of the discussion was manipulated so that dyads focused on either accumulating facts (Fact condition) or having fun (Fun condition). Afterward, children discussed the activity with a neutral interviewer. Caregivers in the fact condition were less autonomy supportive when discussing the activity than those in the fun condition. During the caregiver-child interview, caregiver autonomy support was negatively associated with children's disclosure of correct event details for those in the fun condition only. Caregiver autonomy support was negatively associated with children's correct details during the experiment-child interview across both context conditions. While older children provided more correct details during both interviews, there were no other age-related effects. These results demonstrate that conversation context moderates the link between autonomy support and children's autobiographical memory performance. Past contradictory findings in the field are discussed in light of these results. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Interactive storytelling for the retelling of autobiographical memory in children: A social robotics approach

Memory is one of our fundamental mental functions, which allows us to revive the past in our minds. When memory is mentioned, we usually want to refer to a particular kind of memory, which is autobiographical memory. Access to these memories can be altered by various affective disorders, especially depression. Regarding these techniques, this study aims to focus on storytelling to contribute to the resilience of children using a social robot approach, as they do not perceive the robot as a figure of superiority, but as a peer. The article follows a literature review method. This paper presents a preliminary scenario for child-robot interaction in three phases, using interactive storytelling as a way to review the children's past experiences. To help those people, particularly children who have faced trauma, to remember the past in a structured and positive way, life review techniques have been developed. Keywords: Autobiographical; memory; robotics; storytelling.

Growing Memories: Coaching mothers in elaborative reminiscing with toddlers benefits adolescents' turning-point narratives and wellbeing.

Parental elaborative reminiscing supports young children's autobiographical memory, narrative, and socioemotional skills. This study is an adolescent follow-up of a reminiscing intervention in which 115 primary-caregiver mothers of toddlers were randomly assigned to a control group (n=59) or to receive training in elaborative reminiscing (n=56) for the next year. At age 15, 93 of the now-adolescents (81%) were invited to narrate a turning point in their lives and to report on their personality traits and well-being. Turning-point narratives were coded for causal coherence (connections between past events and present self) and thematic coherence (elaboration and resolutions). Adolescents whose mothers were in the intervention group told more causally coherent turning-point narratives and reported fewer emotional problems than control participants, covarying for baseline measures and personality traits. Maternal elaborative reminiscing in early childhood appears to have long-term benefits for adolescents' causal coherence in turning-point narratives and well-being.

Maternal Emotional Reminiscing, Child Autobiographical Memory, and Their Associations with Pre-Schoolers’ Socioemotional Functioning

ABSTRACT This study aimed to explore the possible indirect pathway between maternal reminiscing style and child socioemotional functioning (prosocial behaviors and emotional adjustment difficulties) through children’s autobiographical memory (elaboration and specificity). A secondary exploratory aim was to examine whether cultural context moderated these indirect effects. Participants included 94 mother-child dyads drawn from middle- and high-income families in China and Australia. The dyads completed measures of child memory specificity, maternal report of child socioemotional functioning, and a shared emotional reminiscing task that assessed child memory elaboration and maternal sensitive guidance. Path analysis results indicated an indirect effect of maternal supportive reminiscing via child memory elaboration (but not memory specificity) on children’s prosocial behaviors, regardless of the cultural group. However, there was no evidence to suggest an indirect pathway between maternal supportive reminiscing and child adjustment difficulties (or prosocial behaviors) through child memory specificity in either cultural context. These findings provide preliminary support to the recent conceptualization of an indirect pathway between maternal sensitive guidance during emotional reminiscing and children’s prosocial behaviors through child memory elaboration. However, it is important to note that the cross-sectional design limits the causal inferences that can be drawn from the findings. The implications for memory specificity in child socioemotional functioning were less clear and indicated a need for further research in this area.

Maternal reminiscing and child autobiographical memory elaboration: A meta-analytic review.

Significant research has investigated the relationship between mother-child reminiscing and children's autobiographical memory development. It has been suggested that mothers who adopt a high elaborative reminiscing style tend to have children who provide greater memory elaboration during joint reminiscing, yet the empirical findings are somewhat mixed. To address this issue, a systematic review and meta-analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between maternal elaborative reminiscing and child autobiographical memory elaboration. Thirty-four cross-sectional and longitudinal studies from peer-reviewed journals and published dissertations were included in the review. Of those, 31 studies had available data for meta-analytic analyses of the maternal reminiscing variables identified in the review. Findings from this study provided strong evidence indicating that high elaborative maternal reminiscing was associated with children's ability to provide greater detailed personal memory, both concurrently and longitudinally. Among maternal elaborative reminiscing elements identified, mothers' open-ended elaboration and positive evaluation were found to be most related to child memory elaboration. More research is needed to identify the effects of sociocultural contexts on the relationship between maternal elaborative reminiscing and child memory elaboration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Measuring Parents’ Elaborative Reminiscing: Differential Links of Parents’ Elaboration to children’s Autobiographical Memory and Socioemotional Skills

ABSTRACTParents’ elaboration plays an important role in autobiographical memory and socioemotional development. Two types of coding approaches have been used to assess parents’ elaboration: a frequency-based coding (absolute frequencies of different types of elaborative utterances) and a scale-based coding (a 5-point scale based on relative frequencies of types of questions). We examined whether these two coding approaches were related and whether they were differentially associated with child autobiographical memory and socioemotional skills. Sixty-eight preschoolers (M = 50.32) reminisced about positive and negative past events, with their parents and with a researcher. Parents’ elaboration was assessed using the frequency- and scale-based coding approaches. Child autobiographical memory and emotion references were assessed in shared recall (parent–child conversations). Child autobiographical memory was also assessed in independent recall (researcher-child conversations). Child emotion regulation was assessed using the Challenging Situation task. The two coding approaches were moderately related. Parents’ elaboration was related to child autobiographical memory and emotion references in shared recall, regardless of the coding approach. Whereas the frequency-based coding was uniquely related to child memory in the independent recall, the scale-based coding was uniquely related to child emotion regulation. Implications of using diverse coding approaches to understand the role of parents in child development are discussed.

Sleep and cognitive development in preschoolers: Stress and autobiographical performance associations

Sleep regulation is an important developmental milestone for children. Although sleep quality has been associated with mental health as a function of negative valence of memories, to our knowledge, there is no information about autobiographical memory specificity and sleep functioning among children ages 3 to 6 years. Because autobiographical memory is consolidated at 4 and a half years of age, this is an important developmental period to study. Thus, the main aim of this study was to examine the relationship between sleep characteristics (by parental self-report) and performance on the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) adapted for children (Nieto, Ros, Mateo, Ricarte, & Latorre, 2017), as well as the relationships between sleep characteristics, AMT and stress levels. One hundred seventy children (51% boys) between the ages of 41 and 78 months were tested in an infant/preschool context. Results showed that the time (measured in minutes) slept during the night or the day positively correlated with autobiographical memory specificity, regardless of memory valence. Finally, specific memories with a positive valence correlated negatively with stress. Due to the relevance of sleep for neurological development and its association with psychopathology, the current results support the significance of controlling sleep quality in the development of autobiographical memory in children, as well as the need to explore its possible association with the presence of positive or negative emotional state during retrieval. In short, our results represent the first approach to the subject under study, which should be completed with objective sleep measures.

Investigating whether maternal memory specificity is indirectly associated with child memory specificity through maternal reminiscing

ABSTRACTMaternal reminiscing and remembering has a profound influence on the development of children’s autobiographical remembering skills. The current study investigated the relationships between maternal memory specificity, maternal reminiscing and child memory specificity. Participants consisted of 40 mother–child dyads. Children’s age ranged between 3.5 and 6 years. Mothers and children participated in individual assessments of autobiographical memory specificity. Dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about three past emotional (happy, sad, stressful) events. A positive moderate association was found between maternal autobiographical memory specificity and child autobiographical memory specificity. Maternal autobiographical memory specificity was significantly correlated with mothers’ focus on the task, involvement and reciprocity, resolution of negative feelings, and structuring of narratives in the mother–child reminiscing task. Moderate positive associations were found between maternal focus and structuring and child memory specificity. There was no evidence to suggest maternal elaborative reminiscing style was significantly positively correlated with mother or child memory specificity. Finally, there was support for an indirect pathway between maternal memory specificity and child memory specificity through quality of support and guidance provided by the mother in maternal reminiscing. Theoretical and clinical implications are considered.

Origins of mother-child reminiscing style.

Maternal elaborative reminiscing supports preschool children's autobiographical memory, self-concept, and emotion understanding. What are the factors contributing to mothers' elaborative style of reminiscing? In a longitudinal community sample (n = 170 at the final data point), this study explored the role of maternal depression (8-44 months), maternal sensitivity and maternal mind-mindedness (8 months), as well as child factors of joint attention (15 months), attachment security (15 months), and language (26 months) for mother-child reminiscing about a positive (happy) and a negative (scared) event at 44 months. Mothers could be classed into two groups of low versus increasing depression from 8 to 44 months, yet maternal depression did not uniquely predict mother-child reminiscing after accounting for maternal sensitivity and other factors. Instead, maternal sensitivity, children's joint attention, and language uniquely predicted children's elaborations about the scared event at 44 months, and maternal sensitivity uniquely predicted mothers' elaborations about the scared event at 44 months. Mothers who are more sensitive in early interactions may later be better at engaging their children when reminiscing about negative emotions. These findings have implications for the design of interventions targeted at supporting mothers to engage in elaborative reminiscing with their preschool children.

The Role of Autobiographical Memory in the Development of a Robot Self.

This article briefly reviews research in cognitive development concerning the nature of the human self. It then reviews research in developmental robotics that has attempted to retrace parts of the developmental trajectory of the self. This should be of interest to developmental psychologists, and researchers in developmental robotics. As a point of departure, one of the most characteristic aspects of human social interaction is cooperation—the process of entering into a joint enterprise to achieve a common goal. Fundamental to this ability to cooperate is the underlying ability to enter into, and engage in, a self-other relation. This suggests that if we intend for robots to cooperate with humans, then to some extent robots must engage in these self-other relations, and hence they must have some aspect of a self. Decades of research in human cognitive development indicate that the self is not fully present from the outset, but rather that it is developed in a usage-based fashion, that is, through engaging with the world, including the physical world and the social world of animate intentional agents. In an effort to characterize the self, Ulric Neisser noted that self is not unitary, and he thus proposed five types of self-knowledge that correspond to five distinct components of self: ecological, interpersonal, conceptual, temporally extended, and private. He emphasized the ecological nature of each of these levels, how they are developed through the engagement of the developing child with the physical and interpersonal worlds. Crucially, development of the self has been shown to rely on the child's autobiographical memory. From the developmental robotics perspective, this suggests that in principal it would be possible to develop certain aspects of self in a robot cognitive system where the robot is engaged in the physical and social world, equipped with an autobiographical memory system. We review a series of developmental robotics studies that make progress in this enterprise. We conclude with a summary of the properties that are required for the development of these different levels of self, and we identify topics for future research.

Mother–child reminiscing at risk: Maternal attachment, elaboration, and child autobiographical memory specificity

Mother–child reminiscing, the process by which mothers and their children discuss past events and emotional experiences, has been robustly linked with child outcomes, including autobiographical memory. To advance previous work linking elaborative maternal reminiscing with child autobiographical memory specificity, the ability to generate and retrieve specific memories from one’s past, it is essential to make distinctions among aspects of elaboration and to consider how maternal risk factors may influence the reminiscing context. The current study evaluated (a) an interaction between emotional and structural elaboration predicting child autobiographical memory specificity and (b) the potential moderating role of maternal adult attachment. Participants consisted of 95 preschool-aged children and their mothers. The sample was predominantly low income and racially diverse. Dyads completed a reminiscing task that was coded for emotional and structural elaboration. Mothers completed the Experiences in Close Relationships questionnaire (ECR-R) to assess attachment-related avoidance and anxiety, and children completed the Autobiographical Memory Test–Preschool Version (AMT-PV) to assess memory specificity. Results indicated that the association between structural reminiscing and child memory specificity was moderated by emotional elements of reminiscing. At high levels of emotional elaboration, mothers with high levels of structural elaboration had children with more specific memory than mothers with low levels of structural elaboration. Moreover, emotional elaboration (a) predicted less specific child memory without high structural support and (b) negatively predicted child specificity at high levels of maternal attachment avoidance and anxiety, a profile associated with fearful avoidance. Future directions and implications are discussed.

Distinguishing between Traumatic and Non‐Traumatic Memory: A Commentary on Reminiscing and Child Maltreatment

SummarySalmon and Reese review literature on parent–child conversations about children's negative experiences and consider how impoverished parent–child reminiscing about child sexual abuse may affect children's memory for that trauma. To extend the application of developmental psychopathology theory to the study of reminiscing and memory, the present commentary had three overarching goals. First, evidence supporting relatively accurate retention of memories for trauma in contrast to impairments in non‐traumatic autobiographical memory among maltreated children is reviewed. Second, the influence of mother–child reminiscing about everyday emotional experiences on maltreated children's autobiographical memory and socio‐emotional functioning is considered. Third, translational implications are discussed.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Autobiographical memory in children with Idiopathic Generalised Epilepsy

Autobiographical memory involves the recall of both personal facts (semantic memory) and the re-experiencing of past personal events (episodic memory). The recall of autobiographical episodic details has been associated with a specific network, which involves the prefrontal and medial temporal lobes, in addition to posterior regions of the brain. Seizure activity has been previously shown to disrupt the consolidation of newly-learned information into long-term memory, but it is not yet known whether primary generalised seizures alone are also associated with deficits in the recall of autobiographical memories. Here we examined this recall in children who experience generalised rather than localisation-related seizures: children with Idiopathic Generalised Epilepsy (IGE). In this study, 18 children with IGE and 42 healthy controls of comparable age (6–16 years), sex and socio-economic status were administered the Children's Autobiographical Interview (CAI). Compared with controls, children with IGE recalled significantly fewer episodic details, even when retrieval prompts were provided. In contrast, no group difference was found for the recall of semantic autobiographic details. Within the IGE group, hierarchical regression analyses showed that patient age and earlier age of diagnosis were significantly related to the recall of episodic autobiographical details over different conditions of the CAI, explaining up to 37% of variance. To our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence of autobiographical episodic memory deficits in patients with primary generalised seizures. As no evidence of localisation-related epilepsy is apparent in patients with IGE, our findings suggest that generalised seizures alone, especially when developed at an early age, could compromise memories for personally-experienced events.

A preliminary study of gender differences in autobiographical memory in children with an autism spectrum disorder.

Autobiographical memory was assessed in 24 children (12 male, 12 female, aged between 8 and 16 years) with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and a comparison group of 24 typically developing (TD) children matched for age, IQ, gender and receptive language. Results suggested that a deficit in specific memory retrieval in the ASD group was more characteristic of male participants. Females in both the TD and ASD groups generated more detailed and emotional memories than males. They also demonstrated superior verbal fluency scores; verbal fluency and autobiographical memory cueing task performance were significantly positively correlated in females. Results are discussed in light of recent research suggesting gender differences in the phenotype of ASD.

Overgeneral autobiographical memory in children of depressed mothers

The goal of this study was to examine overgeneral autobiographical memory in a population at-risk for depression (i.e., children of depressed mothers). We predicted that children of depressed mothers would display less-specific memories than children of non-depressed mothers and that these results would be observed among children with no prior history of depression themselves. Participants in this study were children (age 8–14; 50% girls, 83% Caucasian) of mothers with (n = 103) or without (n = 120) a history of major depressive disorder during the child's life. Mothers' and children's diagnoses were confirmed with a diagnostic interview, and children completed the Autobiographical Memory Test and a measure of depressive symptoms. We found that children of depressed mothers, compared to children of non-depressed mothers, recalled less-specific memories in response to negative cue words but not positive cue words. Importantly, these results were maintained even when we statistically controlled for the influence of children's current depressive symptom levels and excluded children with currently depressed mothers. These results suggest that overgeneral autobiographical memory for negative events may serve as a marker of depression risk among high-risk children with no prior depression history.

Accuracy of episodic autobiographical memory in children with early thyroid hormone deficiency using a staged event

Autobiographical memory (AM) is a highly constructive cognitive process that often contains memory errors. No study has specifically examined AM accuracy in children with abnormal development of the hippocampus, a crucial brain region for AM retrieval. Thus, the present study investigated AM accuracy in 68 typically and atypically developing children using a staged autobiographical event, the Children's Autobiographical Interview, and structural magnetic resonance imaging. The atypically developing group consisted of 17 children (HYPO) exposed during gestation to insufficient maternal thyroid hormone (TH), a critical substrate for hippocampal development, and 25 children with congenital hypothyroidism (CH), who were compared to 26 controls. Groups differed significantly in the number of accurate episodic details recalled and proportion accuracy scores, with controls having more accurate recollections of the staged event than both TH-deficient groups. Total hippocampal volumes and anterior hippocampal volumes were positively correlated with proportion accuracy scores, but not total accurate episodic details, in HYPO and CH. In addition, greater severity of TH deficiency predicted lower proportion accuracy scores in both HYPO and CH. Overall, these results indicate that children with early TH deficiency have deficits in AM accuracy and that the anterior hippocampus may play a particularly important role in accurate AM retrieval.

Mother–child reminiscing and autobiographical memory specificity among preschool-age children.

Overgeneral memory (OGM) refers to difficulty in retrieving specific autobiographical memories. The tendency to be overgeneral in autobiographical memory recall is more commonly observed among individuals with emotional disorders compared with those without. Despite significant advances in theory and identification of mechanisms that underlie the etiology of OGM, there has been little integration between normative research on the development of autobiographical memory and research on OGM. Informed by a developmental psychopathology perspective and drawing on normative developmental research on the social construction of autobiographical memory, the current investigation examined whether the elaborative quantity and elaborative quality of maternal reminiscing are predictive of preschool-age children's autobiographical memory specificity. Additionally, this investigation tested whether children's positive self-representations may explain these hypothesized associations. Participants consisted of 95 mother-child dyads. Children's ages ranged between 3.5 and 6 years, and the sample was predominantly low income and of minority race/ethnicity. Dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about 4 past events, and children participated in assessments of autobiographical memory specificity and self-representations. Results indicated that the elaborative quality, defined by maternal-sensitive guidance and emotional narrative coherence, but not the elaborative quantity, of maternal reminiscing style was significantly associated with children's autobiographical memory specificity. Additionally, there was support for an indirect pathway between maternal reminiscing quality and child memory specificity through children's positive self-representations. Directions for future research are discussed, and potential clinical implications are addressed.

Development of autobiographical memory in children with autism spectrum disorders: Deficits, gains, and predictors of performance

Autobiographical memory (AM) was assessed in 63 children (aged 8-17 years) with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and compared with 63 typically developing children matched for age, gender, IQ, and verbal ability. A range of methodologies was employed for eliciting past experience with particular focus on the ability to recall (a) specific events, (b) the recent and remote past, and (c) semantic versus episodic memories across different lifetime periods. Results indicated that the ASD group manifested difficulties in retrieving specific memories to word cues and had poorer access to the remote past. Deficits were found in the context of intact recent memory and preserved general memory abilities, with some impairment of visual memory. Problems in retrieving episodic and semantic AMs across the life span were also evident. Qualitative analysis of memory reports suggested that the ASD group was less likely to refer to emotion in their remote memories but more likely to describe emotions in their recent memories. Important predictors of AM performance in the ASD group were central executive abilities, in particular cognitive flexibility and verbal fluency.

Autobiographical Memory in Children with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Autobiographical memory involves the recall of personal facts (semantic memory) and re-experiencing of specific personal events (episodic memory). Although impairments in autobiographical memory have been found in adults with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and attributed to compromised hippocampal integrity, it is not yet known whether this occurs in children with TLE. In the current study, 21 children with TLE and 24 healthy controls of comparable age, sex, and socioeconomic status were administered the Children's Autobiographical Interview. Compared to controls, children with TLE recalled fewer episodic details, but only when no retrieval prompts were provided. There was no difference between the groups for semantic autobiographic details. Interestingly, the number of episodic details recalled increased significantly from 6 to 16 years of age in healthy control children, but not in children with TLE. Exploratory analyses revealed that, within the group of children with TLE, epilepsy factors, including presence or absence of structural hippocampal abnormalities, did not relate to the richness of episodic recall. Our results provide first evidence of autobiographical episodic memory deficits in children with TLE.

Autobiographical Memory in Children and Adolescents With Acute Stress and Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Children exposed to traumatic events either recently (Study 1) or in the past (Study 2) were administered the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT). In Study 1 (N = 67), when asked to retrieve memories from the 24-hour period following their trauma, children with higher levels of acute stress disorder symptoms retrieved a greater number of specific memories on the AMT than either children with low acute stress levels or hospital control children; no difference between groups was observed when memories were retrieved from a period that predated their trauma. However, in Study 2 (N = 67) children with posttraumatic stress disorder retrieved fewer specific memories than non-PTSD controls. The two studies represent the first occasions that AMT performance has been examined in acutely traumatised children and in a sample of children stringently diagnosed with PTSD respectively. The findings underscore the need for further prospective research with clinical samples of children who have experienced trauma.