As I wrote in another comment, while not promoting the retention at earlier ages, lifespan integration (http://www.lifespanintegration.com/) has promoted recall of memories. (even though this is not the main goal of the technique)
Since it's too late for you to promote your own memories, you could look for avenues to recall more of the ones you probably have hidden somewhere.
"Specifically, mothers who used more "deflections", such as "Tell me more" and "What happened?" tended to have children who subsequently recalled more details of their earlier memories."
It's interesting it specifies mothers - this suggests that there was a difference with the effect with fathers. Or that they only looked at children who never chat with their fathers?
>Another important finding was that the style mothers used when chatting with their 3-year-olds was associated with the level of remembering by those children later on. Specifically, mothers who used more "deflections", such as "Tell me more" and "What happened?" tended to have children who subsequently recalled more details of their earlier memories. //
It only mentions mothers. Suggesting either fathers were scientifically accounted for - the only way would appear to be by using subjects without contact with their father [or similar figure]. Or, that children chatting with fathers doesn't elicit the same response in recall and this was measured as insignificant and hence discounted.
The assumption that [all] children only chat over memories with mothers would be a rather massive flaw in a scientific analysis. [Yes there are of course other influences, primarily siblings I imagine, that are also unaccounted for].
Even if we assume that father's are absent during the events that are later recalled then interactions with father's could be more important. In that assumed environment mothers [or other carers] being present don't have to have details recalled to them; but I'm heading off-piste there.
The specification of it being "mothers" not "parents" or "primary care-givers" - assuming scientific rigour - must be important.
The specification of it being "mothers" not "parents" or "primary care-givers" - assuming scientific rigour - must be important.
I am disinclined to assume such scientific rigor as the explanation for that wording. I am much more inclined to assume unquestioned bias on the part of the people who wrote and administered the study. We have peer reviewed journals et al to help account for the fact that humans are pretty darn bad about being human, no matter their job title. But, ultimately, it is essentially impossible to weed out bias entirely.
I hope you are right and I am not but I see no reason at this time to think so.
>They recorded mothers talking to their 3-year-olds about six past events, such as zoo visits or first day at pre-school. The researchers then re-established contact with the same families at different points in the future. Some of the children were quizzed again by a researcher when aged 5, others at age 6 or 7, 8 or 9. This way the researchers were able to chart differences in amounts of forgetting through childhood. //
They did, but why?
In order to isolate the mothers influence and make the study capable of providing scientific results one would need to rule out the major external factors - the primary one in my view is paternal interactions.
If they chose only mothers to assess - and the presence of only mothers in the other studies suggests they did - then this seems notable. Why? Did they already have a result showing paternal interactions had no effect? Are they trying to demonstrate a theory in which only maternal interactions are valid for stimulating recall? Or what? Just seems like a big old hole that would warrant a mention somewhere in such an article.
