Content and consistency in young children's autobiographical recall

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Even very young children are capable of recalling past events. Previous research has indicated that children are learning the appropriate forms for talking about the past in conversations with adults. However, exactly what young children remember and how consistent their recall is from time to time is less clear. We investigated these questions by comparing the content of 30‐ to 35‐month‐old children's memories for events experienced during two separate interviews with their mother, two interviews with a stranger, or one interview with their mother and one with a stranger. Two major findings emerged. First, children recalled more accurate information when conversing with the stranger than with their mother. Second, although we found more consistency in children's recall when conversing with the same adult across the two interviews than when conversing with a different adult, children's recall was highly inconsistent overall. Children overwhelmingly remembered different, but still accurate information on the second interview. Implications of these findings for early autobiographical memory and for childhood amnesia are discussed.