In this paper, we extend our social-cultural developmental model of autobiographical memory development (Nelson & Fivush, 2004) to discuss children's developing understanding of self and other as temporally extended in time. Parent-guided reminiscing about past events that includes discussion, comparison, and negotiation of internal states of self…

The knowledge system of the young child is considered script-based, where script is used (in the Schank and Abelson 1977 sense) as a frame defining an expected sequence of actions in a given context involving props, scenes, and actors. This study was concerned with how scripts may be influenced by the structure of different events and the child's…

Linguistic and cognitive competencies of preschoolers were revealed by interviewing them about routine activities. It was found that freeing preschoolers' speech from constraints inherent in talking about the immediate context results in their demonstrating control over a variety of language-related skills that are generally assumed to be beyond…

Forty-three children, 2;11 to 5;6, described six familiar activities: making cookies, going to the grocery, having a birthday party, going to a restaurant, getting dressed, and having a fire drill. They described each event three times. The descriptions were elicited by initially asking "What happens when...?" or "What do you do when...?" and then…

Explores three aspects of temporally displaced talk between mothers and children: (1) the role of the knowledge base in such talk; (2) the effect of mother talk on child talk; and (3) the impact of such talk on the child's knowledge base. Indicates that maternal speech can mediate information and experience and contribute to the child's world…