Preschoolers' ability to learn new information: the role of parental reminiscing

After several years of research, it is now well-established that parental reminiscing style (i.e., the way parents discuss the past with their child) positively influences the accuracy of children’s autobiographical memory (Wu & Jobson, 2019). Some results have additionally suggested that parental reminiscing could also promote children’s ability to learn new information (Langley et al., 2017). The present longitudinal study examines among 53 parent-child dyads what specific elements of parental reminiscing could predict preschoolers’ ability to learn new information. To capture parental reminiscing style, we analyzed parent-child reminiscing about a prior standardized event (a museum visit). To assess children’s memory performance, story recall tasks were administered at baseline and, on average 9 months later, at follow-up. Cluster analyses conducted on our scores of parental reminiscing revealed the existence of 2 clusters of parents (labelled as “high-elaborative” or “less-elaborative”) that differed mainly on the content addressed during reminiscing. Specifically, high-elaborative parents engaged in richer reminiscing (i.e., by expanding on information about the event per se as well as on related information) and adopted a more metacognitive speech as compared to less-elaborative parents. Our results indicated that children of high-elaborative parents had better memory performance at the time of the reminiscing evaluation and at follow-up, confirming that differences in parental reminiscing could influence preschoolers’ ability to learn new information.