Influences on Children's Narrative Coherence: Age, Memory Breadth, and Verbal Comprehension.
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Date
2007-05-31
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Abstract
Narrative coherence, or the measure of how well a particular memory has been structurally organized and interpreted, is receiving increased attention from memory researchers, likely due to its presumed links with effective coping and long-term remembering. The current study shed light on this important but elusive construct by exploring factors that influenced coherence in children's personal memory narratives of events that occurred in both the recent and distant past. Specifically, 112 4- to 8-year-old children were asked to remember parent-nominated events that transpired within the past 4 months. One year later, when the children were 5- to 9-years-old, they were asked to remember both the previously discussed events that occurred over a year in the past and more recent events that occurred within the past 4 months. The research employed a recently devised standardized coding scheme to examine the chronology and theme dimensions of coherence in the children's memory narratives. Cross-sectional analyses revealed that 8-year-olds produced memory narratives that were significantly higher in both the theme and chronology dimensions of coherence than 4- and 6-year-olds. Multilevel modeling of children's recent memories indicated that verbal comprehension scores related positively to both theme and chronology, but only the theme dimension was affected by memory breadth. Further, a child's current reporting ability was found to be a significant influence on the theme and chronology of children's narratives of events that transpired over a year in the past, but these dimensions of coherence were no longer affected by the initial breadth of that memory. Overall, the influences on children's narrative coherence differ both between the theme and chronology dimensions and between recent versus distant memories. Implications for memory research are discussed.
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Keywords
autobiographical memory, coherence, narrative
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Degree
PhD
Discipline
Psychology
