Cultural, Cognitive, &Social Influences on Autobiographical Memory Development

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Much research has established that the ways in which parents talk with their children about past events is a major contributor to autobiographical memory development. Parents with a highly elaborative reminiscing style ask more questions and provide more detailed information, prompts, and cues to engage their children, who in turn come to report more about their own personal past. Further, cross-cultural research suggests Western parents tend to be more elaborative during reminiscing, and parents from collectivistic cultures tend to be more repetitive, asking simple or redundant questions, and fewer questions overall. Although some [unreadable] descriptive research has examined effects of social class on reminiscing, to date no research has attempted to disentangle race and SES differences, and very little research has taken advantage of longitudinal designs and appropriate analytic techniques to examine the contributions of early cognitive and socialemotional variables to reminiscing. Longitudinal data from 176 racially and economically diverse families in the Durham Child Health and Development Study provides a unique opportunity to address these issues. This project has two specific aims: 1) Apply and adapt established methods of narrative reduction to a large and diverse sample. By utilizing established methods of narrative coding and analysis for reminiscing, and adding socioculturally sensitive items, the results of the proposed project can be compared to the existing literature while also investigating important variables that may differentiate sociocultural groups. 2) Learn and utilize sophisticated analytic methods to determine culturally sensitive influences on autobiographical memory development. This includes clustering families by demographic information, parental beliefs, neighborhood characteristics, etc. to determine sociocultural groups, rather than relying solely on a priori distinctions based on race and SES. Multilevel modeling and structural equation modeling will be used to explore how relations between the longitudinal trajectories of children's cognitive and socialemotional development and parent-child reminiscing may be moderated by sociocultural group. This project will provide important knowledge for public health. The deliberate/strategic memory skills in the proposal are used by children in the classroom context, and understanding their development has implications for academic success. As much research has linked specific narrative characteristics and styles of expression to well-being, the relations between reminiscing style and temperament and attachment may contribute greatly to research on clinical and mental health outcomes. Finally, the attention devoted to sociocultural influences, & the efforts to conduct analyses in a culturally informed and sensitive manner. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]