What do you remember about Captain Jon's visit?: Parent-child conversations and children's memory for a science lesson

Previous research on parent-child conversations about personal and school events has consistently demonstrated positive relation-ships between parents' elaborative questioning and preschool/ kindergarten children's event memory. This study examined whether similarly positive relationships would be evident in school-age children. Kindergarten, 2nd/3rd-grade, and 5th/6th-grade children participated in a classroom science lesson about flight. At home following the lesson, parents talked with their chil-dren about this event in any way that seemed natural to them. Children's memory was assessed both during the parent-child con-versation and with a researcher at delays of 3 and 15 days. Expected positive associations between parents' use of elaborative questioning and children's memory for novel details during the parent-child conversation were apparent for kindergartners but not for older children. In addition, parents' use of elaborative ques-tioning techniques, including asking open-ended memory ques-tions, was negatively correlated with older children's longer-term memory performance. Predicted positive associations were observed between children's initial recall of novel details and their memory for the lesson after 3 days (all three age groups) and after 15 days (the two older age groups). We discuss possible reasons why relationships between parental conversational styles and chil-dren's event memory change as children advance to formal schooling. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.