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The extant literature on the use of autonomy support during caregiver-child conversations has focused primarily on conversations about fun, shared experiences, with limited consideration of unshared experiences or attention toward the role of conversation context. The present study examined how autonomy support, conversation context, and child age interact to predict 3-to-5-year-old children's disclosure of accurate information when discussing an unshared past event with their caregiver and an experimenter. Dyads (N = 111) were recruited from two locations (Miami, Florida and Orange County, California) by research recruitment firms. Children completed a standardized activity alone and then discussed the activity with their caregiver. The context of the discussion was manipulated so that dyads focused on either accumulating facts (Fact condition) or having fun (Fun condition). Afterward, children discussed the activity with a neutral interviewer. Caregivers in the fact condition were less autonomy supportive when discussing the activity than those in the fun condition. During the caregiver-child interview, caregiver autonomy support was negatively associated with children's disclosure of correct event details for those in the fun condition only. Caregiver autonomy support was negatively associated with children's correct details during the experiment-child interview across both context conditions. While older children provided more correct details during both interviews, there were no other age-related effects. These results demonstrate that conversation context moderates the link between autonomy support and children's autobiographical memory performance. Past contradictory findings in the field are discussed in light of these results.

BackgroundResearch conducted with typically developing (TD) infants and children generally indicates that better habitual sleep and sleep after learning are related to enhanced memory. Less is known, however, about associations between sleep and recall memory in children with Down syndrome (DS).AimsThe present study was conducted to determine whether parent-reported sleep problems were differentially associated with encoding, 1-month delayed recall memory, and forgetting over time in children with DS and those who were TD.Methods and proceduresTen children with DS (mean age = 33 months, 5 days) and 10 TD children (mean age = 21 months, 6 days) participated in a two-session study. At each session, recall memory was assessed using an elicited imitation paradigm. Immediate imitation was permitted at the first session as an index of encoding, and delayed recall was assessed 1 month later. In addition, parents provided demographic information and reported on child sleep problems.Outcomes and resultsAlthough parents did not report more frequent sleep problems for children with DS relative to TD children, regression-based moderation analyses revealed that more frequent sleep problems were associated with increased forgetting of individual target actions and their order by children with DS. Evidence of moderation was not found when examining encoding or delayed recall.Conclusions and implicationsAlthough group differences were not found when considering parent-reported sleep problems, more frequent sleep problems were positively associated with increased forgetting by children with DS relative to those who were TD. Although future experimental work is needed to determine causality, these results suggest that improved sleep in children with DS might reduce forgetting, ultimately improving long-term recall memory.

Emotion regulation (ER) is a multifaceted construct, involving behavioral, cognitive, and physiological processes. Although autonomic coordination is theorized to play a crucial role in adaptive functioning, few studies have examined how different individual and contextual factors together may contribute to such coordination. This study examined the joint influences of narrative processing and emotional negativity/lability (N/L) traits on the coordination of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in a sample of 112 children, ages 8–12 years (Mage = 10.15 years, SD = 1.33). Children completed a stress‐induction task followed by an interview about the task. Children's trait‐level N/L was assessed via parent‐report on the Emotion Regulation Checklist. Narrative processing was assessed and coded based on children's narrative accounts of the event (i.e., causal coherence, overall emotional tone). Indexes of sympathetic (skin conductance response, SCR) and parasympathetic (respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) functioning were derived from physiological data obtained during the interview. Results revealed that children's trait‐level N/L and narrative processing of the stressful event interacted to predict the RSA–SCR correlation. Specifically, children who were high on either N/L or narrative causal coherence, but not both, demonstrated significant RSA–SCR correlation. Similarly, children with high N/L and negative‐to‐neutral narratives, as well as those with low N/L and neutral‐to‐positive narratives, exhibited significant RSA–SCR correlation. This work provides empirical evidence that narrative processing and trait N/L, together with RSA–SCR correlation, work in tandem to regulate emotional arousal. This study examined the interactive roles of individual and contextual factors in association with autonomic coordination in ER. Children's trait‐level negativity/lability and narrative processing (i.e., causal coherence, the overall emotional tone) interacted to predict sympathetic and parasympathetic coordination. Findings empirically support that narrative processing and trait N/L, together with RSA–SCR correlation, work in tandem to regulate emotional arousals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation in social skills therapy (SST) facilitates cognitive functioning in children with developmental disabilities. The present pilot study examined whether participation in SST was associated with enhanced encoding and 1-month delayed recall in children with Down syndrome (DS). Children were presented with novel three-step event sequences in an elicited imitation procedure. Immediate imitation was permitted as an index of encoding; long-term memory was assessed 1 month later. Parents completed questionnaires inquiring about children's participation in SST. Participation in SST was associated with enhanced encoding of temporal order information and 1-month delayed recall of individual target actions. In addition, encoding mediated the relation between group and 1-month delayed recall. The conducted research indicates that involvement in SST may be beneficial for children with DS despite their noted strengths in imitation and social learning. As such, additional experimental work is warranted to determine causality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both human and nonhuman primate adults use infant-directed facial and vocal expressions across many contexts when interacting with infants (e.g., feeding, playing). This infant-oriented style of communication, known as infant-directed speech (IDS), seems to benefit human infants in numerous ways, including facilitating language acquisition. Given the variety of contexts in which adults use IDS, we hypothesized that IDS supports learning beyond the linguistic domain and that these benefits may extend to nonhuman primates. We exposed 2.5-month- old rhesus macaque infants (N = 15) to IDS, adult-directed speech (ADS), and a non-social control (CTR) during a video presentation of unrelated stimuli. After a 5-or 60-minute delay, infants were shown the familiar video side-by- side with a novel video. Infants exhibited a novelty preference after the 5-minute delay, but not after the 60-minute delay, in the ADS and CTR conditions, and a novelty preference in the IDS condition only after the 60-minute delay. These results are the first to suggest that exposure to IDS affects infants’ long-term memory, even in non-linguistic animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We investigated how differences in infant sex and mothers’ dominance status affect infant rhesus macaques’ (Macaca mulatta) interest in visually exploring emotional facial expressions. Thirty‐eight infants were presented with animated avatars of macaque facial expressions during the first month of life. Sons of high‐ranking mothers looked more at faces, especially the eye region, than sons of low‐ranking mothers, but no difference in looking duration was found for daughters. Males looked significantly more at eyes than females, but this effect was reversed in infants who were reared without mothers in a primate nursery facility. In addition, in mother‐infant interactions, mothers of sons were more likely to gaze at their infant's face compared to mothers of daughters. Combined with previous research indicating that rhesus macaque mothers interact differently with infants based on their own rank and infant's sex, these results support the view that social experiences shape early face preferences in rhesus macaques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]