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The effects of parent-child conversation and object manipulation on children's learning, transfer of knowledge, and memory were examined in two museum exhibits and conversations recorded at home. Seventy-eight children (Mage  = 4.9) and their parents were randomly assigned to receive conversation cards featuring elaborative questions about exhibit objects, the physical objects themselves, both, or neither, before their exhibit visits. Dyads who received the cards engaged in more elaborative talk and joint nonverbal activities with objects in the first exhibit than those who did not. Dyads who received objects engaged in the most parent-child joint talk. Results also illustrate transfer of information across exhibits and from museum to home. Implications for understanding mechanisms of informal learning and transfer are discussed.

Geospatial technologies, such as geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and GPS have been used in a variety of educational settings to help improve student learning. A sample of 53 high school seniors was recruited from the Geospatial Semester (GSS), a course that emphasizes the use of GIS for problem-solving and students in AP Physics and AP History served as a comparison. GSS students' spatial thinking and problem solving improved across the school year in contrast to Comparison Group. Results suggest that GIS-based instruction can be used to enhance students' use of spatial reasoning when solving STEM-relevant problems.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of how conversations children have with their parents about events—both as they unfold and after they have occurred—can affect children’s memory for personal experiences. We begin with a discussion of the ways parents reminisce with their children about past experiences and the implications of individual differences in reminiscing styles for children’s developing event and autobiographical memory skills. Then we turn to consider how parent–child conversations as events unfold can influence understanding, encoding, and subsequent remembering. We conclude by drawing attention to potential multiplicative effects of different types of event talk for children’s learning and remembering, and how parent–child conversations during and after events may support children’s deliberate memory skills.