Given the critical role of memory in all aspects of successful adaption, this project is designed to identify and characterize developmental pathways to skilled remembering in young children. It builds upon a rich data base regarding age-related changes in children's memory that has been amassed over the last 20 years. This research has shown convincingly that with increases in age, children become more proficient in the production of narrative accounts of their previous experiences and the generation of effective strategies of the storage and retrieval of information. The wealth of information regarding the mnemonic abilities of children of different ages notwithstanding, critical issues concerning the development of these skills remain largely unaddressed For example, little is known about the course of development of autobiographical recall and planful remembering and the intersection between these two domains of memory. Moreover, even less is understood about the experiential factors that are associated with the emergence and refinement of these cognitive skills. The research proposed here is designed to address these issues by providing a longitudinal analysis of children's varied abilities to remember. Using two overlapping cohorts of children, age-related changes in remembering will be tracked from 18 to 72 months of age, concentrating especially on the multiple contributions of language and social communication to the development of memory. Taking non-verbal indices of young children's memory as a foundation, the emergence, refinement, and generalization of verbal skills for remembering will be charted. Moreover, this emphasis on the development of key verbal memory skills mandates a parallel examination of transitions between children's abilities (a) to talk about experiences in the present; (b) to discuss events in the past, and (c) to plan deliberately for future assessments of memory. Although there are rich research literatures in each of these areas, these bodies of work have not been integrated with each other, and longitudinal methods have not bee used to tracer the development of memory skills within individual children from late infancy through the transition to school.
| Reese, Elaine; Haden, Catherine A; Baker-Ward, Lynne et al. (2011) Coherence of Personal Narratives across the Lifespan: A Multidimensional Model and Coding Method. J Cogn Dev 12:424-462 |
| Haden, Catherine A; Ornstein, Peter A; O'Brien, Barbara S et al. (2011) The development of children's early memory skills. J Exp Child Psychol 108:44-60 |
| Hedrick, Amy M; Souci, Priscilla San; Haden, Catherine A et al. (2009) Mother-Child Joint Conversational Exchanges During Events: Linkages to Children's Memory Reports Over Time. J Cogn Dev 10:143-161 |
| Hedrick, Amy M; Haden, Catherine A; Ornstein, Peter A (2009) Elaborative Talk During and After an Event: Conversational Style Influences Children's Memory Reports. J Cogn Dev 10:188-209 |
