Talking about the past with preschool siblings: Consistency and change in maternal styles across children

Research evidence indicates that maternal styles of talking about the past have long-term influences on children's autobiographical memory development. The present study focuses on whether mothers are consistent in their style of talking about the past with different children, and how siblings' memory participation relates to relative consistency or inconsistency of maternal style. Subjects were 24 white, middle-class mothers with two same-sex (half with boys, half with girls), preschool-age children. Analyses reveal that mothers are extremely consistent in their level of elaborativeness across siblings. Importantly, maternal stylistic consistency across siblings is evident even when mothers are discussing different events with their two children. Thus, highly elaborative mothers appear more elaborative in general, across different conversational partners and events discussed. Analyses of the siblings' talk indicate that different age siblings are similar to each other in their level of memory responding. Older siblings who contribute much memory information have younger siblings who show similarly high levels of recall. Factors which might relate to maternal stylistic consistency are considered. Qualitative maternal stylistic consistency and relationships to siblings' memory participation is discussed with implications for autobiographical memory development in families.