Theoretical advances in understanding children’s memory for distressing events: The role of attachment

Mother-child memory conversation and children's independent memory: the roles of maternal characteristics

Mother-child memory conversations are a nuanced and important factor in children's memory development. The current study focuses on maternal characteristics that are related to individual differences in maternal elaborative style. It also examines the role of maternal elaborative style in children's elaborativeness in the context of reminiscing and recounting. Two hundred and nine Turkish mothers (Mage = 36.32, SD = 4.99) and their 5- to 6-year-olds (Mage in months = 66.88, SD = 4.04) (110 girls, 99 boys) participated in the current study. Results revealed that maternal individuation and balanced self-construal type predicted maternal elaborativeness, which in turn predicted child elaborativeness in reminiscing and recounting. Yet, such a relation was not observed for maternal attachment styles or sensitivity. Findings suggested the importance of maternal individuation and balanced self-construal for mothers' and children's elaborativeness in memory conversations.

Parent-child attachment security is associated with preschoolers' memory accuracy for emotional life events through sensitive parental reminiscing

There is considerable controversy regarding the accuracy and suggestibility of children's autobiographical memory for emotionally salient life events. Attachment perspectives of autobiographical memory development identify the attachment security of parent-child dyads and parents' emotional support and coherence during reminiscing with their children as critical mechanisms underlying children's memory accuracy and suggestibility. In the current investigation, 72 preschool-aged children (M = 4.01 years, SD = 0.85; 44 female) reminisced with their parents about times they felt happy, sad, scared, and angry. Children were then independently interviewed about these experiences by an unfamiliar researcher using free recall, specific questions (i.e., questions about factual details), and misleading questions (i.e., questions suggesting false details). Parents completed an assessment of their children's attachment security within the parent-child relationship. Results revealed significant indirect effects of parent-child attachment security on children's memory accuracy through parental sensitive guidance during reminiscing when cognitive (i.e., intelligence) and behavioral (i.e., temperament, behavior problems) covariates were statistically controlled. Parent-child attachment security was positively associated with parental sensitive guidance during reminiscing, which, in turn, was positively associated with the accuracy of children's independent reports. The findings support attachment perspectives of autobiographical memory by identifying emotionally sensitive and coherent reminiscing as a parenting behavior that explains in part associations between parent-child attachment security and children's independent memory accuracy for emotional life events.

Parental Attachment and Children's Memory for Attachment-Relevant Stories

Despite evidence that parents' attachment is associated with children's memory, less is known about the mechanisms underlying this association or the contexts in which the association is most meaningful. The present study examined whether parents' attachment predicted children's memory for stories about attachment-related topics, whether the cohesiveness of children's stories mediated the association between attachment and memory, and whether the association varied by interview support at retrieval. Five- to 6-year-olds completed attachment-relevant stories while parents provided information about their romantic attachment. Children's stories were coded for cohesiveness. A week later, children's memory for their stories was tested by either a supportive or non-supportive interviewer. When the interview was non-supportive, greater parental avoidance was associated with poorer memory, whereas when the interview was supportive, greater parental avoidance was associated with fewer errors. Findings provide insight into the context under which parents' attachment is most influential in shaping children's memory.

Parental Factors Associated with Child Post-traumatic Stress Following Injury: A Consideration of Intervention Targets

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are relatively common following pediatric traumatic injury and are related to poor long-term child outcomes. However, due to concerns regarding the efficacy of early child preventive interventions, and difficulty intervening with injured and medicated children soon after the event, it is not feasible to provide early psychological interventions to children exposed to traumatic injury. Parental PTSD symptoms and reactions to the child's traumatic injury impact child outcomes and provide potential targets for early intervention to reduce child symptom development without involving the child. The authors conducted a review of the literature using Psycinfo and Pubmed research databases (publication years = 1990-2017) and identified 65 published studies relevant to the topic of the review. The present review considers parent factors [parenting styles, parental post-traumatic pathology (PTS), adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies, and communication regarding the traumatic injury] and their impact on child PTS. We focus specifically on factors amenable to intervention. We further review moderators of these relationships (e.g., child age and gender, parent gender) and conclude that it is unlikely that a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment will be successful. Rather, it is necessary to consider the age and gender of parent child dyads in designing and providing targeted interventions to families following the traumatic injury of a child.

Attachment security and narrative elaboration

A key means of getting to know someone is through the sharing of personal experience narratives, an ability that shows considerable individual variation. Past research has documented a relationship between narration in conversations between children and their mothers and attachment security. However, children's narrative contributions are often embedded in an ongoing conversation which may be structured differently by mothers who also have assessed the extent to which their children use them as a secure base. In the present project, these two measurements were independent. Children's narration to an attentive, but non-scaffolding, stranger was investigated to see whether that, too, would correlate with security as assessed by mothers. Participants were 32 4-year-old children and their mothers. The security of children's attachment to their mother was assessed using the revised parent-reported 90-item Q-Sort and correlated with two measures of narration. One was simple length in words of the three longest narratives told to a friendly stranger, and the other was a composite formed from specific scored narrative variables. Both narrative measures were significantly correlated with attachment security, even after partialling out the effects of gender, age, and receptive vocabulary.These results suggest that securely-attached children have internalized the inclination to disclose themselves by means of relating narratives of some length and have begun to generalize this to adults outside their family.

When Parents Know Little about What Happened: Parent-guided Conversations, Stress, and Young Children's Eyewitness Memory

This study examined how 4- to 7-year-olds' memories for a stressor were influenced by conversations with a parent who had little knowledge of the target event, and the stress children experienced before, during, and after the event. Children (N = 43) watched a mildly stressful video before talking about it with a parent. Parents were asked to focus on either the children's feelings or the content of the video itself. A researcher interviewed the children about their memory following the conversation. Behavioral and physiological measures of children's stress were collected at multiple stages. Children recalled more inaccurate information with the parent than with the interviewer. Younger age and parent insecure attachment were associated with poorer memory. Manipulation of parents' emotion orientation did not predict memory, but individual differences in the talk did, although in different ways from what would be expected from research on conversations about shared events. Less stress (according to self-reported happiness and observed negative affect) before and after, but not during, the stressor was linked with better memory. Implications for children's memory in legal settings are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mother-child reminiscing at risk: Maternal attachment, elaboration, and child autobiographical memory specificity

Mother-child reminiscing, the process by which mothers and their children discuss past events and emotional experiences, has been robustly linked with child outcomes, including autobiographical memory. To advance previous work linking elaborative maternal reminiscing with child autobiographical memory specificity, the ability to generate and retrieve specific memories from one's past, it is essential to make distinctions among aspects of elaboration and to consider how maternal risk factors may influence the reminiscing context. The current study evaluated (a) an interaction between emotional and structural elaboration predicting child autobiographical memory specificity and (b) the potential moderating role of maternal adult attachment. Participants consisted of 95 preschool-aged children and their mothers. The sample was predominantly low income and racially diverse. Dyads completed a reminiscing task that was coded for emotional and structural elaboration. Mothers completed the Experiences in Close Relationships questionnaire (ECR-R) to assess attachment-related avoidance and anxiety, and children completed the Autobiographical Memory Test-Preschool Version (AMT-PV) to assess memory specificity. Results indicated that the association between structural reminiscing and child memory specificity was moderated by emotional elements of reminiscing. At high levels of emotional elaboration, mothers with high levels of structural elaboration had children with more specific memory than mothers with low levels of structural elaboration. Moreover, emotional elaboration (a) predicted less specific child memory without high structural support and (b) negatively predicted child specificity at high levels of maternal attachment avoidance and anxiety, a profile associated with fearful avoidance. Future directions and implications are discussed.

Enhancing family resilience through family narrative co-construction

We draw upon family resilience and narrative theory to describe an evidence-based method for intervening with military families who are impacted by multiple wartime deployments and psychological, stress-related, or physical parental injuries. Conceptual models of familial resilience provide a guide for understanding the mechanics of how families respond and recover from exposure to extreme events, and underscore the role of specific family processes and interaction patterns in promoting resilient capabilities. Leading family theorists propose that the family's ability to make meaning of stressful and traumatic events and nurture protective beliefs are critical aspects of resilient adaptation. We first review general theoretical and empirical research contributions to understanding family resilience, giving special attention to the circumstances, challenges, needs, and strengths of American military families. Therapeutic narrative studies illustrate the processes through which family members acquire meaning-making capacities, and point to the essential role of parents' in facilitating discussions of stressful experiences and co-constructing coherent and meaningful narratives. This helps children to make sense of these experiences and develop capacities for emotion regulation and coping. Family-based narrative approaches provide a structured opportunity to elicit parents' and children's individual narratives, assemble divergent storylines into a shared family narrative, and thereby enhance members' capacity to make meaning of stressful experiences and adopt beliefs that support adaptation and growth. We discuss how family narratives can help to bridge intra-familial estrangements and re-engage communication and support processes that have been undermined by stress, trauma, or loss. We conclude by describing a family-based narrative intervention currently in use with thousands of military children and families across the USA.

How do children make sense of their experiences? Children’s memories of wellbeing and distress from an attachment perspective

Attachment’s role in children’s memories of wellbeing and distress was evaluated through the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task in 30 Italian children, aged 6 years (15 secure and 15 insecure). Their mothers’ coherence of discourse was determined using the Adult Attachment Interview. A mediation model examining whether children’s attachment mediated the relation between mothers’ ability to talk coherently about their past and children’s memories was tested. Children’s attachment was associated with their ability to describe memories of wellbeing and distress and mediated the influence of maternal coherence on the same ability. A regression model was estimated to further evaluate the association between children’s attachment and ability to describe memories. Results suggest that attachment influences how children understand and recollect emotional experiences.

Can maltreated children inhibit true and false memories for emotional information?

The authors examined 284 maltreated and nonmaltreated children's (6- to 12-year-olds) ability to inhibit true and false memories for neutral and emotional information using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Children studied either emotional or neutral DRM lists in a control condition or were given directed-remembering or directed-forgetting instructions. The findings indicated that children, regardless of age and maltreatment status, could inhibit the output of true and false emotional information, although they did so less effectively than when they were inhibiting the output of neutral material. Verbal IQ was related to memory, but dissociative symptoms were not related to children's recollective ability. These findings add to the growing literature that shows more similarities among, than differences between, maltreated and nonmaltreated children's basic memory processes.

Child maltreatment and memory

Exposure to childhood trauma, especially child maltreatment, has important implications for memory of emotionally distressing experiences. These implications stem from cognitive, socio-emotional, mental health, and neurobiological consequences of maltreatment and can be at least partially explained by current theories concerning the effects of childhood trauma. In this review, two main hypotheses are advanced: (a) Maltreatment in childhood is associated with especially robust memory for emotionally distressing material in many individuals, but (b) maltreatment can impair memory for such material in individuals who defensively avoid it. Support for these hypotheses comes from research on child abuse victims' memory and suggestibility regarding distressing but nonabusive events, memory for child abuse itself, and autobiographical memory. However, more direct investigations are needed to test precisely when and how childhood trauma affects memory for emotionally significant, distressing experiences. Legal implications and future directions are discussed.

Attachment Working Models Twist Memories of Relationship Events

The information that people remember about their relationships should be affected by their attachment orientations. This study investigated changes in individuals’ memories of their own behavior during conflict-resolution discussions with their romantic partners. One week after each couple engaged in two videotaped conflict discussions, each partner’s memory of the discussions was assessed. Memory biases were systematically related to attachment orientations. More avoidant individuals, for example, remembered being less supportive than they reported initially if they were relatively distressed during the discussions, whereas the opposite was true of less avoidant persons. More anxious individuals remembered being less emotionally distant than they reported initially if they were relatively distressed during the discussions, whereas the opposite was true of less anxious persons. We discuss the implications of these memory changes.

Children's eyewitness memory: a comparison of two interviewing strategies as realized by forensic professionals

A critical issue for developmental psychology is how to obtain accurate and complete eyewitness memory reports from preschoolers without offering suggestions that might result in false allegations. We examined effects of two interviewing strategies (police/verbal interviews and clinician/prop-assisted interviews) on young children's reports about a medical examination. A total of 58 4-year-olds participated in the study, which conformed to a 2 (Interview Type)x2 (Number of Interviews) factorial design. Analyses revealed that interviewers spent less time off topic and asked more free recall questions in the police/verbal interviews than in the clinician/prop-assisted interviews. Compared with police/verbal interviews, clinician/prop-assisted interviews resulted in significantly more correct rejections and commission errors in children's memory reports. However, on a final free recall test, error rates were comparable across conditions. Higher child verbal intelligence predicted memory accuracy in police/verbal interviews, and greater parental attachment anxiety predicted children being asked a higher number of misleading questions. The study provides new insights into interview techniques that promote preschoolers' accurate eyewitness reports.

Memory, maternal representations, and internalizing symptomatology among abused, neglected, and nonmaltreated children

A depth-of-processing incidental recall task for maternal-referent stimuli was utilized to assess basic memory processes and the affective valence of maternal representations among abused (N = 63), neglected (N = 33), and nonmaltreated (N = 128) school-aged children (ages 8-13.5 years old). Self-reported and observer-rated indices of internalizing symptoms were also assessed. Abused children demonstrated impairments in recall compared to neglected and nonmaltreated children. Although abused, neglected, and nonmaltreated children did not differ in valence of maternal representations, positive and negative maternal schemas related to internalizing symptoms differently among subgroups of maltreated children. Valence of maternal schema was critical in differentiating those with high and low internalizing symptomatology among the neglected children only. Implications for clinical intervention and prevention efforts are underscored.

The role of attachment and cognitive inhibition in children's memory and suggestibility for a stressful event

There has been increasing interest in children's abilities to report memories of and resist misleading suggestions about distressing events. Individual differences among children and their parents may provide important insight into principles that govern children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility for such experiences. In the present study, 51 children between the ages of 3 and 7 years were interviewed about an inoculation after a delay of approximately 2 weeks. Results indicated that parents' attachment Avoidance was associated with children's distress during the inoculation. Parental attachment Anxiety and the interaction between parental Avoidance and children's stress predicted children's memory for the inoculation. Cognitive inhibition was also a significant predictor of children's memory errors and suggestibility. Theoretical implications concerning effects of stress and individual differences on children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility are discussed.