Tested predictions of infantile amnesia theory compared with social-interactionist account of autobiographical memory. Found maternal reminiscing style and self-recognition when child was 19 months old uniquely predicted children's shared memory reports across time, even with children's initial language and nonverbal memory factored out.…

Forty 3.5- to 4.5-year-olds discussed past events with their mothers and completed tasks indexing their ability to reason about conflicting mental representations and understanding of knowledge. Found that theory-of-mind scores were related to memory conversation participation, independent of age and linguistic skill, and to the frequency of…

Measures of vocabulary, phonological memory, nonverbal intelligence, and reading were taken from 80 children at ages 4, 5, 6, and 8 years. Comparisons revealed a significant shift in the causal underpinnings of the relationship between phonological memory and vocabulary development before and after age five. (Author/LB)