Coaching in maternal reminiscing with preschoolers leads to elaborative and coherent personal narratives in early adolescence

Abstract

This long-term follow-up of an early childhood training study (Growing Memories) to promote elaborative reminiscing tested continued effects on mother–child reminiscing and on adolescents’ narrative coherence. Of the original 115 families, 100 participated when their children were 3.5 years of age and 76 participated when their children were young adolescents (Mage = 11.2 years). Mothers and children reminisced about a positive event and a negative event at each timepoint, and adolescents narrated high points and low points. Mothers and children who had participated in the reminiscing intervention in early childhood remained more elaborative in dyadic reminiscing over time. Moreover, adolescents whose mothers had participated in elaborative reminiscing training in early childhood told more coherent low-point narratives (with respect to context and theme) than adolescents of mothers in the control group. These long-term benefits for the quality of mother–adolescent reminiscing and adolescents’ narrative coherence have implications for theories of narrative identity development and for designing interventions in early childhood to foster autobiographical memory, which may help later understanding of difficult life events.