Remembering and Telling: A Developmental Story

AbstractThe relation of narrative to the onset of autobiographical memory in early childhood is considered from the perspective of three sources of narrativity: (a) event knowledge, (b) parental talk about past and future events, and (c) knowl-edge of story schemata. Evidence from work on children's scripts and episodic memory indicates that both general and specific event knowledge is well estab-lished by 3 years of age. Evidence from the monologues of a 2 year old (Emily) indicated that parental talk about past and future events was available as a model for the child to use to formulate her own memories and anticipations in verbal form, and that she did indeed produce coherent accounts of past happenings and future activities based on, but going beyond, these models. By 3 years, however, Emily—and most children observed—could tell a good story about her own life's events, but did not recount a fictional story that had been read to her in the same coherent narrative mode. Both good memories and good stories seem to be based on representations of events influenced by parental models of narrative-type talk. (Psychology)