October 31--Maternal Directing

Like Geoffrey, I found the concept of “maternal directing” of memories to be very interesting, particularly the idea that it has proven to be much more effective to fill in the gaps of what infants and children don’t remember rather than asking them questions in an attempt to probe their memory. This made me wonder what the infants and children are really remembering, the actually experience of whatever it is they are trying to remember or what their mother has told them about it. In this context, I assumed that the authors were talking about remembering events consciously and being able to recall them verbally, as opposed to unconscious influences, and, if this is in fact the case, it seems much more likely that children would recall their mother’s discussion of the incident rather than the incident itself. I do understand, though, that asking questions, especially the same one over and over again, will likely not stimulate a child to remember an event, I wonder if filling in the gaps is actually increasing the memory.