Talking after school: Parents' conversational styles and children's memory for a science lesson

- Parents' conversation style associated with preschoolers' memory for science lesson.
- Parents' memory questions and descriptives correlated with details children provided.
- Performance with parents after school associated with memory six days later.
- Parents naïve to lesson details may boost children's memory through conversation.

A scientist taught 40 4- to 6-year-old children an interactive science lesson at school. The same day, children talked about the lesson at home with a parent who was naive to the details of what had transpired at school. Six days later, a researcher interviewed children about objects, activities, and concepts that were part of the lesson. Aspects of parents' conversational style (e.g., open-ended memory questions, descriptive language) predicted how much information children provided in talking with them, which in turn predicted children's memory performance 6 days later. The findings suggest that elaborative parent-child conversations at home could boost children's retention of academic information acquired at school even when parents have no specific knowledge of what children have experienced there.