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This article examines the political socialization of young children who live under conditions of intractable conflict. We present four premises: First, we argue that, within the context of intractable conflict, political socialization begins earlier and faster than previously suspected, and is evident among young children. Second, we propose that the agents of political socialization impart narratives of the ethos of conflict and of collective memory in young children that support continuation of the conflict. Third, we maintain that the great majority of the young children form systematic and coherent systems of beliefs, attitudes, and emotions that support the conflict as a result of political socialization and direct exposure to conflict. Finally, we suggest that the conflict-related contents absorbed by children have lasting effects on the solidification of children’s later socio-psychological repertoire. Our arguments highlight the serious consequences of political socialization processes on very young children in societies involved in intractable conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attachment’s role in children’s memories of wellbeing and distress was evaluated through the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task in 30 Italian children, aged 6 years (15 secure and 15 insecure). Their mothers’ coherence of discourse was determined using the Adult Attachment Interview. A mediation model examining whether children’s attachment mediated the relation between mothers’ ability to talk coherently about their past and children’s memories was tested. Children’s attachment was associated with their ability to describe memories of wellbeing and distress and mediated the influence of maternal coherence on the same ability. A regression model was estimated to further evaluate the association between children’s attachment and ability to describe memories. Results suggest that attachment influences how children understand and recollect emotional experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Storytelling is a ubiquitous human activity that occurs across the lifespan as part of everyday life. Studies from three disparate literatures suggest that older adults (as compared to younger adults) are (a) less likely to recall story details, (b) more likely to go off-target when sharing stories, and, in contrast, (c) more likely to receive higher global story quality ratings. No previous research has investigated these three related constructs in a single study. In addition, previous work has not examined the type of story most commonly told in everyday life: episodic autobiographical memories. Thus, to investigate story characteristics using ecologically valid materials, the current study examined autobiographical memory stories and fictional stories (as a comparison) recalled by younger and older adults. These were content-coded for level of detail and off-target responding, and also evaluated for global quality by layperson raters. Results show age and also gender differences in level of detail, amount of off-target responding, and global story quality across story types. Additional analyses show that level of detail, and personal significance of the memory (not person characteristics such as age and gender), are the best predictors of global story quality in autobiographical memory stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies examined the conditions under which 6-year-old children succeeded in discovering prototypical information within ill-defined categories for fictitious animals that had salient individuating properties. Following either incidental or intentional learning of a single category, children attended to both prototypical and instance-specific features when judging the category membership of new examples (Experiment 1). When the same category was contrasted with a similar category in a sorting-with-feedback procedure, children relied on prototypical features in categorisation despite the fact that instance-specific features dominated their recognition-memory judgements (Experiment 2). The results show young children to be capable of shifting their attention to different kinds of category attributes according to the conditions of category formation and the nature of the assessment task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper addresses issues surrounding the role of rehearsal and developmental increases in rehearsal speed regarding the phonological similarity effect (PSE) on immediate serial recall performance. In two experiments, school-aged children had to recall serially phonological similar and dissimilar words with or without concurrent articulation. Speech rate of the word material was also assessed. The size of the PSE was found to be independent of both age and speech rate. Furthermore, the size of the PSE was lower under articulatory suppression as compared to a standard condition without suppression. These results are consistent with the view that the PSE emerges because confusion during redintegration of degrading short-term codes is more likely for phonological similar items than for phonological distinct items. The occurrence of the PSE seems to be independent of rehearsal although articulatory suppression can moderate the size of the PSE. The parts of the redintegration mechanism that are responsible for the PSE seem to be age-invariant between 7 and 13 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's ability to recall text stories coherently and the ways in which this skill unfolds in the context of parent-child interaction have been receiving increasing research attention over the last several years. However, mothers' ability to turn a purely visual story into a verbal one and the implications for their children's independent story recall have not been studied. The present experiment investigated how mothers constructed a verbal story from a wordless storybook with their preschool children. A significant aim was to examine whether the narrative structure of mothers' story productions may be affected by previewing. We also analysed the effects of this betweensubjects manipulation on the narrative structure of children's independent story recall. Results indicated that previewing helped mothers to tell more coherent stories and helped them to invite their children to collaborate in the story construction. Children of mothers who previewed the story also had superior cued story recall. Implications and constraints of the data are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of two nonspecific verbal prompts in interviewing preschool children and second graders. Forty kindergartners (M age = 71.6 months) and 46 second graders (M age = 97.6 months) watched a 7 minute video about a gang of adolescent boys stealing money from another youth. Three weeks later they were interviewed about the content of the film under two experimental conditions. Both groups were first asked to report everything that they could remember about the movie. This initial instruction was then repeated twice for the no cues group. Participants in the verbal cues group were instead instructed to report everything they remembered seeing and everything they remembered hearing. In addition, verbal intelligence was measured for all participants. Children of both age groups reported significantly more information when they were interviewed under the verbal cues condition. The use of the verbal prompts did not affect the overall high levels of accuracy. Verbal intelligence showed a moderate positive effect on measures of recall but did not moderate the efficacy of the verbal prompts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the assumption that rich domain knowledge can compensate for low overall aptitude on domainrelated cognitive tasks. W hereas previous research dealing with text recall and text comprehension tasks has provided evidence supporting this assumption, recent studies examining the effects of both expertise and intelligence on a strategic memory task (sort-recall task) found that the effects of domain knowledge were not strong enough to eliminate performance differences between high- and low-aptitude experts. In our experiments, both text-recall and sort-recall measures related to the game of soccer were presented to highand low-aptitude fourth-grade children who were either soccer experts or novices, using a within-subjects design. The main difference between the two studies concerned the testing procedure: W hereas in Study 1 testing was conducted in small groups, in Study 2 children were tested individually. Both studies confirmed the outcom e of previous research; that is, effects of aptitude on text recall and comprehension were eliminated when the impact of expertise was considered simultaneously. However, they also replicated the earlier finding that this pattern of results does not generalise to other memory tasks. That is, expertise does reduce but not eliminate the relationship of IQ to memory tasks involving deliberate strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the relationships between metamemory, the use of simple memory strategies and memory performance in children aged 4 to 5 years. Children carried out two m emory tasks (memory span for pictures, free recall of toys), and their recall and use of strategies while carrying out these tasks was recorded. They also completed two m etamemory tasks: predicting memory performance and responding to a nonverbal questionnaire concerning knowledge about memory-relevant variables. The metamemory questionnaire scores were significant predictors of memory performance in both tasks. In addition, some of the strategy variables were negative predictors of performance. Off-task behaviour reduced recall, as did naming (an unexpected result), for free recall of toys. Naming items at recall (but not at presentation) reduced recall in the mem ory span task. There was also some positive evidence that children who consistently nam ed pictures at presentation had higher memory spans than children naming at recall only or using no strategies at all. It was concluded that both metamemory knowledge and the use of simple strategies are significantly related to memory performance in young children, but that these relationships are m odest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]