Poster #9 - Remembering a Science Lesson: Parents’ Conversations With Their School-aged and Preadolescent Children

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Previous research with preschool and kindergarten children suggests that the way in which parents talk with their children about both personal and academic events influences what children remember. In particular, children’s memory is enhanced when their parents adopt an elaborative conversational style (e.g., Haden, Ornstein, Eckerman, & Didow, 2001; Hedrick, Haden, & Ornstein, 2009; Leichtman, Camilleri, Pillemer, Amato-Wierda, Hogan, & Dongo, 2017; Reese & Brown, 2000). Parent-child conversations about a science lesson and children’s memory were explored in two new age groups. A professional pilot visited the classrooms of 109 school-age (mean age = 8.45 years) and preadolescent children (mean age = 11.93 years) and taught an interactive science lesson about the concepts of airplane flight. That same day, parents were asked to talk with their children about this learning event; they were unaware of what concepts had been taught and what happened during the lesson. On day 3 and day 15 following the lesson, children participated in a memory assessment to determine what concepts and event details they remembered. For both age groups children’s recall of concepts and details during the conversation with their parents predicted their memory for concepts and details on day 3 and day 15. In contrast to prior research with younger children, parents’ elaborativeness and use of memory questions during conversations with their children were not associated with children’s recall when talking with their parents and were negatively related to children’s recall on day 3 after the lesson (see Tables 1 and 2 for correlations between all variables). Children who had better memory of the event did not need the support of an elaborative conversation to help reactivate memories, whereas parents of children who struggled to recall the event repeatedly asked elaborative questions in an apparent attempt to help the child retrieve additional information. Furthermore, children’s ability to recall details from the lesson at multiple time points was highly and significantly correlated with teachers’ ratings of children’s overall academic skills (rschoolagetotalscoreday3 = .44, rschoolagetotalscoreday15 = .51, rpreadolescenttotalscoreday3 = .50, rpreadolescenttotalscoreday15 = .31) and parents’ education level (rschoolagetotalscoreday3 = .48, rschoolagetotalscoreday15 = .44, rpreadolescenttotalscoreday3 = .37). The findings suggest that the structure and functions of parent-child conversations about a science lesson differ for school-age and preadolescent children in comparison with younger children. As children progress through the school years, they appear to play a more direct and active role in organizing their own memory processes about learning episodes.

Authors

• Kaitlin A Camilleri, University of New Hampshire
  Presenting Author

• Michelle D Leichtman, University of New Hampshire
  Non-Presenting Author

• David B Pillemer, University of New Hampshire
  Non-Presenting Author