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.