I found this weeks readings to be surprisingly interesting in regards to two major themes. The first of these these is that of "maternal reminiscing" [Nelson] or "maternal directing" [Harley]. The idea of the style by which mothers describe or talk about the past with their infants as being important to the infants later ability to remember things verbally, or to retell them in detail is amazing to me. Not only would i never have guessed that his was the case, but i was very skeptical of it as i read it. After going through all of the readings, it would seem that there really is a connection, and that the difference which is obviously mother to mother, can also be seen culture to culture. The example of cultures which promote oral history and the adults ability to remember their early childhood better is very intriguing. I also found it interesting that the big difference between style is presented as either filling in the gaps of the story the infant does not produce vs. asking the child baited questions in the hopes that they will remember. To me, the logical choice would be to do both, and i found it really surprising that filling in the gaps seemed to be so much more effective than asking the child more questions or giving them small cues in the hopes they would remember. Similarly, i found it rather strange that Pillemer claimed that mothers style of narrative taught children what was appropriate to remember and what is not. This did not seem to come up significantly in the other readings, but is something that struck me as i read it and i would like it if we could bring it up in class.
The second big thing that was interesting was the correlation between self recognition and autobiographical memory. While it seems obvious that being able to recognize yourself would impact your ability to remember things about yourself and what happened to you, it is less obvious that infants could have "verbal" or "autobiographical" memory before they were able to recognize themselves in the mirror [Bauer and Harley]. Not only is that counter intuitive, but it also means that the standard memory idea of implicit and explicit memory is in place and functioning form a very young age, and not something that develops at 3-5 years of age as the other readings were suggesting. It is important to realize that the explicit memory ability is likely developing over this time period as the frontal lobe is developing, but it not "turned off", it is more likely unreliable or incapable of handling significant detail. This idea actually goes really well in hand with one of my earliest memories in which i remember not being able to talk.
In terms of why adults do not remember these things very well, i found that while the different theories were compelling, they all seem to have a faulty assumption that was pointed out by one of the other arguments we read.
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You brought up the same two things that I found most interesting about these readings on infantile amnesia.
I was also very skeptical about the idea of mother's reminiscing styles as being so important to the child's future ability to remember things verbally. I remain pretty skeptical (not of the validity of the correlation because I agree that there seems to be one) of the idea that the style in which a mother questions her child about the past will directly affect what the child will remember verbally or the level of detail that he will use. My feelings on the matter are more similar to what you brought up about the Pillemer reading. I think the mother-child interaction shapes the way a child learns the acceptable way in which to recall their memories, that the way the child sees his parents remembering is what he will do in future. I do not believe, however, that this interaction affects WHAT the child actually remembers. I think that all the information is just as likely to be there in a case of a low elaborative parent as in a high one. I think it's possible that if correctly prompted the low elaborative child (with all other things being equal) could produce the same responses as a child with high elaborative parents.
Also, I completely agree that it is counterintuitive to claim that a child could have autobiographical memory before being able to recognize themselves as themselves. From a purely philosophical standpoint it makes no sense to claim that the child has a memory of himself doing something when he cannot differentiate himself from the rest of the world. He has no self to remember doing something. Those claims frustrated me as well. I don't quite understand the connection to implicit/explicit memory that you are making; however, I think it is an interesting connection to think about and could be used to call into doubt the timelines of autobiographical development in some of the articles.
I wasn't as skeptical of the importance of style of parents speech influencing how and what a child will remember. As seen in learning to speak, a child uses adult language as a tool to learn their language. This to me would also hold true with memory. If a parent uses more detailed questioning filling in gaps, a child will mimic that form of speaking to remember at least to some extent. In that same vein children pay attention to what adults say, they here the emphasis of speech and include it in their memories. So if in a museum looking at a room a child will pay most attention to what catches his eye, in turn the adult generally will look at and speak about the given object. this may help explain why children remember what adults say. In my first year I did an experiment in the Liberty science center, to see how children behaved in a museum setting. Although I focused on gender, I noticed that adults tended to explain the things that interested the children. So when a boy went to the touch tank, an adult was a step behind asking questions. There is reinforcement of certain objects over others. I imagine that this would later enable children to better remember the experience based on adult communication as well as the attention of the child.
With cues in questions it is possible that one child will remember more than another, because they are constrained to think about the issues. Depending on how a question is asked it may elicit different responses and different memories of a given day. Also in some cases, could produce false memories...
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