Conversation counts for kids

The importance of talking to young children is well recognised, but just how important has been revealed by research at Otago's Department of Psychology.
A new study has shown that pre-schoolers' memory and language skills can be significantly improved if their mothers talk to them in richer and more detailed ways about past events.

Associate Professor Elaine Reese says the study's findings have important implications in ensuring that children are well-prepared to learn once they reach school.

Reese and then-PhD student Rhiannon Newcombe carried out a year-long intervention study with 115 Dunedin mothers and their 1 -to-3 -year-old children. With the help of research assistants Rebecca Brookland and Meagan Stephenson, half the mothers were trained in an elaborative questioning technique to use when discussing memories with their toddlers.

"For instance, mothers were prompted to ask more open-ended questions containing new information about events to confirm their children's responses and to focus on what the child had found most interesting," Reese says, adding that training was given to mothers in this study because they were the primary caregivers.

"We found that children of trained mothers remembered more details and told more complex stories about the past when conversing with their mothers than children of untrained mothers," she says.

"These findings are important because children's language skills in the pre-school years are a very good predictor of their early reading skill and their success in school. We know that children with better narrative skills do better at school," she says.

"We also know from other research that children with richer stores of autobiographical memories have a more coherent self-concept."

Parent-child conversations are vital for children to develop these memory and narrative abilities, but children's cognitive level is also important when considering the benefits of adult conversation.

"The effects of maternal training were strongest for children who had more advanced levels of self-awareness at the start of the study. These children provided the most accurate memories and detailed narratives with a researcher at age 3 1/2."

The study began in 1999 when the children were one-year-olds. In 2008, Reese hopes to follow up with the children at age 10 to determine whether the training has lasting effects on the children's language, reading, memory skills and self-concept.

FUNDING
Marsden Fund
University of Otago Division of Sciences Research Grant