Mnemonic Support and Curriculum Selection in Teaching by Mothers: A Conjoint Effect

PRICE, GARY GLEN. Mnemonic Support and Curriculum Selection in Teaching by Mothers: A Conjoint Effect. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 659-668, A novel prediction is tested in this study. The prediction is derived from a hypothesized psychological mechanism whereby preschool children remember content better when adults encourage child-generated verbal responses that require retrieval of terms from long-term memory. It was predicted that variations in the extent to which mothers encourage such responses would be associated with children's knowledge of lowercase letters only if mothers had been making efforts to teach lowercase letters. The findings, based on 24 mothers and their 3and 4-year-old children, are in strong agreement with the prediction.