Effects of home-, school-, and individual-level factors on children’s deliberate memory development in elementary school
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Olivia K. Cook (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Jennifer Coffman
Abstract: Children enter kindergarten with a variety of experiences and skills. In this transition to formal school, they are expected to adapt quickly to new demands such as remembering specific pieces of information, knowing when to retrieve this information, and understanding how to use this information to complete specific tasks. These skills have been referred to as children’s deliberate memory skills and are thought to serve children’s long term academic success. However, limited research has focused on specific aspects of children’s everyday contexts that play a role in the development of these skills – such as adult-to-child language exchanges in home and school settings. Therefore, the goals of the current study were to (a) understand the role of children’s every day, lived experiences such as parent–child reminiscing and teacher–child linguistic exchanges (i.e., cognitive processing language in classrooms) on the initial acquisition and sustained use of mnemonic strategies across the kindergarten and first-grade years, and (b) describe the interplay between individual-level factors – such as other components of children’s cognition – and these adult-to-child scaffolding practices on children’s memory development. Drawing on a sample of 79 children nested in 10 kindergarten classrooms, children’s deliberate memory skills were assessed at 6 timepoints from kindergarten entry to the end of first grade. Kindergarten teachers’ instruction was recorded using GoPro cameras during regular mathematics and language arts lessons; these recordings were subsequently coded for the prevalence use of cognitive processing language (Coffman et al., 2008; 2019). Parent–child dyads took part in a parent-child reminiscing task in which they were asked to reminisce about two recent events. Conversations were coded for parents’ elaborative reminiscing style (Reese et al., 1993; Langley et al., 2017). Finally, children’s executive function and self-regulation skills were assessed during the kindergarten year using the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task (Zelazo, 2006) and the Head Toes Knees Shoulders Task, (Ponitz et al., 2009; McClelland et al., 2014) respectively. Results from a series of growth curve models using a multilevel modeling framework revealed significant predictors of children’s deliberate memory skills at the start of kindergarten and at the end of first grade, as well as of the rate at which changes in these skills occurred as a function of home-, school-, and individual-level factors. First, although children of parents with high levels of elaborative reminiscing entered kindergarten with higher levels of deliberate memory skills, it was children who had parents who used lower levels of elaborative reminiscing who developed more rapidly over the course of the kindergarten and first grade years. Second, children who were exposed to teachers who used higher levels of cognitive processing language (CPL) in kindergarten developed strategic sorting skills more rapidly over the course of first grade and ended the year with higher levels of deliberate strategy use than their peers who were exposed to lower levels of cognitive processing language. Finally, for children with lower self-regulation skills, those exposed to higher levels of CPL in kindergarten evidenced higher levels of deliberate strategy use at the end of first grade than their peers who were exposed to lower levels of CPL. Taken together, these findings provide insight to the role of parent-child and teacher-child processes on the development of children’s deliberate memory skills during the first two years of elementary school. Strengths, limitations, and future directions for researchers and educators are discussed.
Effects of home-, school-, and individual-level factors on children’s deliberate memory development in elementary school
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Created on 5/1/2023
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Dissertation
- Language: English
- Date: 2023
- Keywords
- Cognitive Development, Deliberate Memory, Mother-Child Reminiscing, Self-Regulated Learning, Teacher Language
- Subjects
- Memory in children
- Cognition in children
- Parent and child
- Teacher-student relationships