Asking Parents to Prepare Children for an Event: Altering Parental Instructions Influences Children's Recall

Abstract

The authors investigated whether manipulating parents' goals regarding their discussion of an upcoming staged event with their 6-year-old children differentially influenced the children's recall. Parents (n ¼ 62) were asked to prepare their child for a staged novel event-''visiting the pretend zoo''-to take place 1 day later. One group (inform) was asked to simply tell their child about the event, whereas a second group (discuss) was asked to engage their child in conversation and seek their child's perspective. A third group of parents (control) read an unrelated story to their child. Relative to parents in the control and inform conditions, parents in the discuss condition engaged their children in richer, more diverse, and complex conversation and their children made more contributions to the conversation. When their recall was tested 1 week later, however, children in the inform condition, relative to the discuss and control conditions, recalled more correct information overall. The reports of children Correspondence should be sent to Karen Salmon,