Could the way we talk to children help them remember their science lessons?

By Christian Jarrett When a parent asks their child plenty of “who?”, “what?”, “when?”, “where?”, “why?” questions, encourages them to go into detail and includes open-ended questions, psychologists call this an elaborative style. Past research has shown that children with parents like this tend to remember more experiences from their lives (the opposite parental style is to ask fewer questions in general, and to ask questions that only need a short, basic response). More specific studies have found that parents’ elaborative chat can also help their children remember museum visits. A new study in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology is the first to apply this line of research to young children’s memories of a recent science lesson. The findings provide tentative evidence that conversing with a child in an elaborative way could help them remember more about their lesson. Michelle Leichtman and her colleagues at the University of New Hampshire, USA, recruited the mothers or fathers of 40 children aged four to six from two schools, one in an upper middle-class area, the other lower middle-class. A scientist visited the children’s schools and gave an engaging, scripted lesson with props about the science of light. That evening, the researchers asked the parents to chat with their child about the lesson in whatever way they found natural, and to record the chat. Six days later, the res...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Educational Language Memory Source Type: blogs