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Culture and parenting shape the ability to recall early childhood experiences. This research focused on the unique context of upbringing in the Israeli kibbutz and examined how cultural orientation and experiences of parental engagement in Kibbutz and non-Kibbutz settings shaped adults' earliest memories. Participants were 108 women (study 1) and 75 women and men (study 2) who were raised in traditional kibbutz upbringing or in a non-kibbutz family setting. In addition to reporting their earliest memory and age at earliest memory, participants estimated retrospectively the amount of daily time spent in interaction with parents, caregivers, and other children during the time of earliest memory. Overall, upbringing-related variations in cultural orientation were evident in the content of memories. A prediction of later age at earliest memory due to limited opportunities for parent-child interaction characteristic of traditional kibbutz upbringing was not supported. Rather, in both studies, age at earliest memory was linked to retrospective estimation of parental engagement, after controlling for childhood ecology. Study 2 revealed also a link of age at earliest memory to retrospective estimation of involvement with non-parental caregivers. These findings are congruent with the social-interaction model's claims about the importance of interaction with caregiving adults to autobiographical memory's development.

The links between social information processing (SIP) and social behavior in preschool are well documented. However, the antecedents of SIP in that age group are less clear. A number of influential theoretical models suggest that a major contributor to SIP is the quality of the child's relationships with the parent. Therefore, we examined the links among quality of the mother-child relationships (measured via direct observations of dyadic play interactions), the child's SIP patterns (measured via direct interview with the child), and the child's perceived behavior in preschool (measured via teacher reports) in a sample of 218 preschool and kindergarten children and their mothers. Applying structural equation modeling, we found support for our theoretical model with a specific emphasis on the negative nature of this association. Specifically, we found a strong indirect path from maternal negative control to the teacher's negative perception of the child's behavior in preschool and kindergarten via less competent SIP patterns. This empirical path remained intact after controlling for various variables such as the family income, the mother's education level, and the child's expressive language abilities, thereby providing further support for the robustness of this association., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)