Mother-child memory conversation and children's independent memory: the roles of maternal characteristics.

Mother-child memory conversations are a nuanced and important factor in children's memory development. The current study focuses on maternal characteristics that are related to individual differences in maternal elaborative style. It also examines the role of maternal elaborative style in children's elaborativeness in the context of reminiscing and recounting. Two hundred and nine Turkish mothers (Mage = 36.32, SD = 4.99) and their 5- to 6-year-olds (Mage in months = 66.88, SD = 4.04) (110 girls, 99 boys) participated in the current study. Results revealed that maternal individuation and balanced self-construal type predicted maternal elaborativeness, which in turn predicted child elaborativeness in reminiscing and recounting. Yet, such a relation was not observed for maternal attachment styles or sensitivity. Findings suggested the importance of maternal individuation and balanced self-construal for mothers' and children's elaborativeness in memory conversations.

Effects of memory and attention on the association between video game addiction and cognitive/learning skills in children: mediational analysis.

BACKGROUND: Video games have become a prevalent source of entertainment, especially among children. Furthermore, the amount of time spent playing video games has grown dramatically. The purpose of this research was to examine the mediation effects of attention and child memory on the relationship between video games addiction and cognitive and learning abilities in Egyptian children. METHODS: A cross-sectional research design was used in the current study in two schools affiliated with Dakahlia District, Egypt. The study included 169 children aged 9 to 13 who met the inclusion criteria, and their mothers provided the questionnaire responses. The data collection methods were performed over approximately four months from February to May. Data were collected using different tools: Socio-demographic Interview, Game Addiction Scale for Children (GASC), Children's Memory Questionnaire (CMQ), Clinical Attention Problems Scale, Learning, Executive, and Attention Functioning (LEAF) Scale. RESULTS: There was a significant indirect effect of video game addiction on cognitive and learning skills through attention, but not child memory. Video game addiction has a significant impact on children's attention and memory. Both attention and memory have a significant impact on a child's cognitive and learning skills. CONCLUSIONS: These results revealed the significant effect of video game addiction on cognitive and learning abilities in the presence of mediators. It also suggested that attention-focused therapies might play an important role in minimizing the harmful effects of video game addiction on cognitive and learning abilities.

Effects of Guiding Ground Rules and Individual Differences on the Accuracy of Children's Free Recall and Suggestibility.

This research examines how the presence or absence of ground rules and children's temperamental tendencies affect children's free recall accuracy and suggestibility. Participating children showed richer free recall with open-ended questions and displayed greater resistance to suggestive questions when provided ground rules during the interview. In addition, children's recall accuracy varied based on their prosocial orientation: the presence or absence of ground rules influenced memory accuracy more in children with a low prosocial orientation than in those with a high prosocial orientation. These results demonstrate the importance of ground rules for obtaining reliable statements from children during investigative interviews. Findings further suggest that children can provide more detailed information when temperamental characteristics (e.g. prosocial tendencies) are considered.

Encouraging more open-ended recall in child interviews.

The goal of child forensic interviewers is to obtain as much information as possible through open-ended recall. Unfortunately, typically interviewers quickly switch to focused questions. This article suggests a way of eliciting more open-ended recall by using the narrative elaboration (NE) procedure, which includes four initial prompts about event participants, context, actions, conversations, and thoughts. The procedure uses line drawings on cards as prompts and requires pre-training; although it substantially increases open-ended recall, in practice it is too time-consuming for regular use. The original NE procedure is compared with two streamlined versions with 3- to 7-year-olds: using NE cards with no pre-training and simply providing parallel NE verbal prompts without using the cards. The children in the streamlined NE interview with verbal prompts were found to provide as much additional information as those in the full NE interview, and considerably more than those in the control interview. Therefore, incorporating NE verbal prompts near the beginning of child interviews is an easy way to increase the amount of information that children provide in open-ended recall.