Emotional Knowledge and Memory Across Preschool Years

Cornell University Ithaca, Ithaca NY

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project aims at testing the influence of children's emotional situation knowledge on their development of autobiographical memory within a cultural-familial context. It examines parent-child interactions over a period of two years, focusing on two distinct populations: European-Americans and Chinese immigrants. Maternal interaction styles will be assessed in laboratory and at home, in relation to children's developing emotional knowledge and autobiographical memory, from 36 to 60 months of age (N=100). Standardized tasks during the first two laboratory visits will include free play, pretend play, story-telling, and memory-sharing. Children's emotional knowledge will be assessed at the beginning and the end of the study. Their autobiographical memory will be assessed at the 48- and 60-month time points. It is expected that cultural differences in maternal interaction styles, including child-centered versus mother-centered play, positive and negative emotional responsiveness, maternal references to feeling states, and causal explanations about emotions, will predict cultural differences in children's emotional understanding, even with initial age and language skills factored out. In turn, children's emotional knowledge will uniquely predict their developing memory ability across the two preschool years. Divergent family socialization practices, evident early in children's lives, will lead to different levels of emotional understanding in children, which will further affect the content, style, and long-term accessibility of their autobiographical memories. Findings from this project will have great implications for current research on autobiographical memory development as well as for policy-making with regard to issues such as education and parenting.