Mother knows best?

About this book

This thesis presents three studies that examine maternal narrative memory challenges during mother-child talk about past events. Maternal challenges are defined as conversational moves in which mothers question or negate the premises of their children's utterances. Study 1 examined the impact of maternal challenges on preschoolers' event memory in an experimental context. Study 2 examined maternal challenges during naturalistic reminiscence about shared past events in two samples—low-income and middle-class mother-child dyads. Study 3 examined the relationships of maternal challenges to other features of maternal talk, namely elaboration, autonomy support, and mind-mindedness. Study 1 found that discussing an event with their alternatively-informed mothers did not reduce children's memory accuracy. Children's memory accuracy was moderated by their theory of mind, indicating that possessing a more advanced theory of mind protected children against being misled by their mothers. Study 2 illuminated social class differences in talking about the past, with middle-class mothers being more elaborative and raising more narrative memory challenges than their low-income counterparts. There were social class differences in how children responded to being challenged as well, with middle-class children more likely to insist on their original points of view and low-income children more likely to defer to their mothers. Study 3 found that relatively more elaborative mothers issued narrative memory challenges more frequently than their less elaborative counterparts, creating a positive picture of challenging. Further, mothers who challenged in an unsupportive manner tended to be low in mind-mindedness. Maternal narrative memory challenges have received relatively little attention in the literature. In bringing this topic to the forefront, this thesis aims to explore the role that these maternal utterances play in children's theory of mind, autobiographical memory, and narrative development.