Work

Linking teachers' memory-relevant language and the development of children's memory skills.

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: This longitudinal study was designed to (a) examine changes in children's deliberate memory across the 1st grade; (b) characterize the memory-relevant aspects of their classrooms; and (c) explore linkages between the children's performance and the language their teachers use in instruction. To explore contextual factors that may facilitate the development of skills for remembering, 107 first graders were assessed 3 times with a broad set of tasks, while extensive observations were made in the 14 classrooms from which these children were sampled. When the participating teachers were classified as high or low in terms of their "mnemonic orientation," in part on the basis of their use of metacognitive information and requests for deliberate remembering during instruction in language arts and mathematics, differences were observed in the use of mnemonic techniques by the children in their classes. By the end of the year, the children drawn from these 2 groups of classrooms differed in their spontaneous use of simple behavioral strategies for remembering and in their response to training in more complex verbally based mnemonic techniques.

Source: Developmental Psychology

DOI: 10.1037/a0013859

Authors: Jennifer L. Coffman, Peter A. Ornstein, Laura E. McCall, Patrick J. Curran

Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Language: English

Topic: Memory Processes and Influences

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development