Citation

Reese E, Brown N. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 2000; 14(1): 1-17.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/(SICI)1099-0720(200001)14:1<1::AID-ACP625>3.0.CO;2-G

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Talk about past events can be classified as either reminiscing (discussing shared experiences) or recounting (discussing unshared experiences). Reminiscing may have more of a social memory function whereas recounting may also be informational. This research focused on the form of mother–child reminiscing and recounting during the preschool years. Twenty 40-month-old and 20 58-month-old children reminisced and recounted past events with their mothers. Results showed that mothers who provided more memory information during reminiscing and requested more memory information during recounting had children who reported more unique information about the events. Regardless of maternal conversational style, however, children reported more unique memory information during recounting than reminiscing. We discuss these results in terms of the importance of both forms of remembering for autobiographical memory development. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.