Memory Strategies and Retrieval Success in Preschool Children: Relations to Maternal Behavior Over Time

We examined how maternal strategic behaviors during a mother–child collaborative sort-recall task of categorically similar items related to children's recall and children's strategic behavior in a sort-recall task that they completed independently. Mother–child dyads participated in the collaborative sort-recall task when children were 40 months and 52 months of age; children completed the individual sort-recall task at one time point only when they were 52 months old. We found relations both concurrently and longitudinally between maternal behavior, child behavior, and child recall. The pattern of findings indicates that there are differences among mothers in how they use memory strategies with their children and that these differences are related to children's recall and their own employment of strategies over time. The results highlight the importance of examining the development of deliberate and strategic remembering in social context.