Maternal and Child Utilization of Memory Strategies

Y V E T r E R. HARRIS and J A M I L A H H A M I D U L L A H Miami University

This study sought to examine the mechanisms employed by mothers as they engage in teaching their children to remember the names of characters, how to wrap a gift, and the location of zoo animals. The specific relationships included an examination of mothers' pre-teaching instructions, mothers' use of memory strategies, child strategy use and the child's correct performance. Participants were 25 mothers and their four- year-old preschoolers. Results suggest that maternal preteaching instructions vary in complexity depending on the nature of the information being taught. In addition, mothers employ a variety of task-dependent memory strategies. In contrast to mothers, the children use proportionately fewer strategies than their mothers. However, their use of strategies is effective in helping them recall names, order, and location. Impli- cations for adult guidance in assisting preschoolers with developing regulatory memory skills are discussed.

Several investigators have advanced the idea that the acquisition of cognitive skills is rooted in the social activities of daily life (Day, French & Hall, 1985; Harris & Haller-Augsbach, 1991; Harris & Miller, 1991; Horn-Ratner, 1980; Paris, Newman, & Jacobs, 1985; Rogoff, Ellis & Gardner, 1984; Wertsch, 1979). This view of the social origins of cognitive development emanates from the renewed interest in the "Cultural Theory" proposed by the Russian educator Lev S. Vygotsky (1977).

The major assumption underlying the Vygotskian philosophy is that cognitive growth is facilitated through social interaction between the developing child and an adult or more advanced peer. This socially mediated cognitive growth appears on two levels: (1) a social or interpsychological level where an adult or more advanced peer assumes the major responsibility for structuring and guiding the learning process and (2) a psychological or intrapersonal level where the child gradually becomes a partner in the learning situation and eventually internalizes the strategies and the skills. Thus, Vygotsky concluded that social interaction is essential in providing the child with the foundation for independent learning and problem solving.

Further expansion and elaboration of Vygotsky's theory comes from the work of Wertsch (1979) investigating the ongoing interaction between mothers and children involved in assembling a puzzle. Wertsch identified four qualitatively different levels describing the child's emerging problem-solving abilities. In the earlier levels, the mother assumes the major responsibility for initiating and completing the steps neces- sary to assemble the puzzle. She gradually reduces her nonverbal input while simulta- neously increasing her verbal assistance in the form of hints and, questions as the child demonstrates competence and assembles the puzzle with minimal errors and assistance.

Current Psychology: Research & Reviews, Spring 1993, Vol. 12, No. 1, 81-94.

82 Current Psychology / Spring 1993

A more quantitative assessment of this microsocial process conducted by Rogoff, Ellis & Gardner (1984) examined the influence of developmental level and context on maternal teaching behavior. Their findings revealed that mothers adjusted their teach- ing behavior for younger children especially when teaching them to classify photographs of objects.

What do children contribute to the learning process? In directly assessing the child's role in a structured learning situation, Scott-Jones (1987) found that children are active in eliciting information about the task from their mothers through questions and com- ments. In fact, these behaviors are more predictive than maternal teaching behaviors of the child's independent problem-solving performance. In contrast, Moss (1984) ana- lyzed the pattern of child internalization of strategies and discovered that young children frequently model strategies following maternal demonstration and initiation of strate- gies. Thus she concluded that four-year olds are at the "crossroads of modeling problem- solving strategies and becoming capable of independent generalizations of these strate- gies." However, she provided no evidence as to whether the children's use of strate- gies directly aided their performance.

A modified version of Wertsch's interpsychological-to-intrapsychological transition model was employed in this study to examine the relationship between quality of maternal preteaching instructions, maternal strategy use, child strategy use, and child performance as mothers were engaged in teaching their children to remember rote (names of characters), sequential (how to wrap a gift), and spatial information (loca- tion of zoo animals).

Maternal preteaching instructions were defined as the initial verbal dialogue occur- ring between the mother and the child as she was engaged in teaching the child to remember the information.

Maternal strategy use was defined as the specific strategies that mothers employed when teaching each of the three tasks.

Child performance was defined as the strategies that children use and how the strate- gies aided their recall and recognition of the information.

The specific questions investigated were: (1) Do maternal preteaching instructions shift depending on whether mothers are teaching their children to remember rote, spatial or sequential information? (2) Do maternal preteaching instructions mediate child strategy use? (3) What strategies do mothers use most frequently when teaching their children to remember the information? (4) Does maternal strategy use mediate child performance? (5) What strategies do the children use when learning to remember the information? (6) How do these strategies facilitate their performance across the three tasks?

METHOD

Subjects

The participants were 25 mother-child dyads, recruited from various day-care cen- ters throughout a small southern town. Mean age for the mothers was 28.1 (SD=7.39)

Harris & Hamidullah 83

and mean age for the children was 54 months (SD=4.08). Approximately half of the children were females and half of the children were males. Mothers were offered a $10 honorarium for their participation in the study.

Materials

Based on extensive pilot testing, three memory games were designed to elicit the maternal and child behaviors.

Cartoon character recall game. Mothers were instructed to teach their children to remember the names of four cartoon characters. The characters were Mike Monkey, Spotty the Dog, Linda lollipop, and Tom Cat.

Photograph Arrangement game. Mothers were instructed to teach their children to remember the order of items needed to wrap a gift. The items were photographs of an empty box, bows, tape, scissors, wrapping paper and a wrapped gift.

Zoo scene game. Mothers were instructed to teach their children to remember the location of five zoo animals. The array consisted of a giraffe, a tiger, a bear, a monkey, and an elephant.

Procedure

Prior to teaching the games to their children the mothers were familiarized with the game and instructed to teach them using a method that they found most comfortable. Mothers were videotaped teaching their children the three memory games in their homes. The videotapes were scored by two trained raters. To establish interrater reli- ability, 40 percent of the interaction tapes were scored independently by two raters. Interrater reliability for the maternal teaching behaviors and the child behaviors was computed using intraclass correlation coefficients (see Appendix for reliability coeffi- cients). Disagreements were resolved through consensus.

Maternal Scoring System

The following scoring system was used to determine maternal preteaching instruc- tions and maternal strategy use for the three memory games.

Maternal Pre-Teaching Instructions: A three-tiered coding system was used to de- termine the quality of maternal instructional support for each task; where Launching into teaching received a score of 1, providing brief instructions received a score of 2 and providing detailed instructions received a score of 3.

Launch: The mother begins teaching the task by naming or questioning. Brie~ The mother provides some abbreviated form of instruction. For example, the

mother informs the child that this is a name game or says that this is a new game that she is going to show the child how to play.

Detailed: The mother describes in depth the purpose of the activity. For example, the mother informs the child that they will be playing three memory games and that she will be teaching the child to play the games one at a time and after they have

84 Current Psychology / Spring 1993

played the games they will show their friend how to play the games.

Maternal Strategies

The following behaviors were scored for frequency of occurrence. Nonverbal strategies: The number of times the mother points to, touches, or holds

the cards, the photos or the zoo pieces. Rehearsal strategies: the number of times the mother verbally draws the child's

attention to a card, object, or photo. Functional strategies: the number of times the mother describes the function of the

objects. Physical strategies: the number of times the mother states the shape, size, sex or

color of the characters, photos, or zoo pieces.

Child Scoring System

Child Strategy Use: The following scoring systems were employed to determine the strategies that the children used and how those strategies aided their performance. The behaviors were scored for frequency of occurrence.

Cartoon Character Recall Game

Nonverbal strategies: The number of times the child touches, points, or holds the cards.

Nonverbal correct: The number of times the child correctly touches or points to the cards using this strategy.

Rehearsal strategies: The number of times the child repeats the name of the charac- ters one at time.

Rehearsal correct: The number of times the child correctly names the characters using this strategy.

Functional strategies: The number of times the child describes the function of a particular character (the monkey swings in the tree, the dog barks, the cat meows).

Functional correct: The number of times the child correctly names the characters using this strategy.

Physical strategies: The number of times the child makes reference to color, size, (the animal is big), shape (the lollipop is round).

Physical correct: The number of times the child correctly names the character using this strategy.

Photograph Arrangement Game

Nonverbal strategies: The number of times the child points to an individual photo- graph or the entire array.

Nonverbal correct: The number of times the child correctly points to the order of the

Harris & Hamidullah 85

photographs using this strategy. Rehearsal strategies: The number of times the child names the sequence or the order

of the photographs. Rehearsal correct: The number of times the child correctly names the order or

sequence of the photographs using this strategy. Functional strategies: The number of times the child describes the function of a

particular photograph (the scissors cut). Functional correct: The number of times the child correctly names the order of the

photographs using this strategy. Physical strategies: The number of times the child makes reference to color, size,

shape (color of the bows, the box is square). Physical correct: The number of times the child correctly names the order of the

photographs using this strategy.

Zoo Scene Game

Nonverbal strategies: The number of times the child points, touches, looks at the object and the object's location.

Nonverbal correct: The number of times the child correctly places the animal in the correct location using this strategy.

Rehearsal strategies: The number of times the child names the animals and their locations.

Rehearsal correct: The number of times the child correctly places the animal in the correct location using this strategy.

Functional strategies: The number of times the child describes the function of a particular animal (the bear eats, sleeps, chases).

Functional correct: The number of times the child correctly places the animal in the correct location using this strategy.

Physical strategies: The number of times the child makes reference to color, size (the bear is brown), shape (the elephant is fat).

Physical correct: The number of times the child correctly places the animals using this strategy.

RESULTS

Mothers" Performance

Maternal Preteaching Instructions. To address the question of the quality of mater- nal preteaching instructions, percentages were tabulated for each of the three levels (Launch, Brief, and Detailed) and for each of the three tasks. For the Cartoon task, 56 percent of the mothers Launched into teaching task, 36 percent of the mothers provided Brief instructions in teaching the task, and 8 percent of the mothers provided Detailed instructions. For the Photo task, 28 percent of the mothers Launched into teaching the task, 68 percent provided Brief Instructions and 4 percent of the mothers provided

86 Current Psychology / Spring 1993

FIGURE 1 Mean Frequencies for Maternal Strategy Use for the Three Memory Games

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Detailed instructions. For the Zoo task, 28 percent of the mothers Launched into teaching the task, 52 percent provided Brief instructions and 20 percent provided Detailed instructions.

Maternal Strategy Use

What strategies do mothers employ? Do these strategies increase or decrease de- pending on whether the mother is teaching rote, spatial or sequential information? To evaluate this question, a 3 (TASK) by 2 (STRATEGY) Repeated Measures Anova with repeated measures on the last factor was performed on the data. Three significant effects were obtained from the analysis: Strategy F (3, 24) =19.96, p<.0002, Task F (2,23)=4.41,p<.02 and a Strategy by Task Interaction, F(2,23)=7.32,p<.003.

Comparisons of the means for the interaction suggests that mothers employed con- siderably more rehearsal strategies in the Cartoon task (M=73.5) than in the Photo task (M=50.2) or the Zoo Scene task (M=46.0). In addition, mothers used slightly more nonverbal strategies in the Cartoon task (M=47) than in the Zoo task (M=43,3) and the Photo task (M=43.3). Furthermore, they provided more functional cues in the Photo task (M=6.9), than in the Zoo, (M=4.8), or the Cartoon task (M=.02). Finally, mothers used more physical strategy cues in the Zoo task (M=5), than in the Cartoon task (M=4.4) or the Photo task (M=1.8) (see Figure 1).

Harris & Hamidullah 87

FIGURE 2 Comparison of Maternal and Child Strategy Use for the Cartoon Character Recall Game

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REHEARSAL N O N V E R B A L F U N C T I O N A L PHYSICAL

STRATEGY

MOTHER AND CHILD PERFORMANCE

Maternal Preteaching Instructions and Child Strategy Use. Does the level of preteaching instructional support mediate child strategy use? To examine this issue a 3 (Level of Preteaching Instructions) by 2 (Child Strategy Use) Repeated Measures ANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor was conducted for each task. None of the Anova's emerged statistically significant.

Maternal Strategy Use and Child Strategy Use. To assess the influence of maternal strategy use on child strategy use, correlations for each task as well as mean frequencies between mother strategy use and child strategy use were computed (see Figures 2-4). Correlational data from the Cartoon task suggested that mother's use of rehearsal and child's use of rehearsal were moderately related (r=.39,p<.04) and mother's use of nonverbal strategies and child's use of nonverbal strategies was negatively related (r=- .51,p<.00).

For the Photo task, mother's use of rehearsal and child's use of rehearsal were not associated (r=.20,p=.32). However, maternal use of nonverbal strategies and child use of nonverbal strategies were moderately related (r=-.43,p<.03).

Similarly for the Zoo scene, mother's use of rehearsal and child's use of rehearsal were not related (r=.08,p--.32), but mother's use of nonverbal strategies and child's use of nonverbal strategies were moderately negatively associated (r=-.43,p<.03).

Maternal Strategy Use and Child Correct Performance. How does maternal strategy use mediate the child's correct performance for each of the three tasks? Correlational evidence reveals the following pattern: For the Cartoon task, mother's use of rehearsal and child's correct performance were moderately related (r=.40,p<.04) and mother's

88 Current Psychology / Spring 1993

FIGURE 3 Comparison of Maternal and Child Strategy Use for the Photograph Arrangement Game

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nonverbal strategy use and child's correct performance were moderately negatively associated (r=-.54,p<.00). None of the correlations emerged statistically significant for the Photo task or the Zoo scene task.

Child Performance

Functional strategies and physical strategies were deleted from the analyses for the child data.

Child Strategy Use and Correct Performance. What strategies do children use and are these strategies helpful in aiding their recall and recognition of rote, sequential and spatial information? To address the first part of the question mean frequencies for child strategy use and correct performance were tabulated for each of the three memory

Harris & H amidullah 89

FIGURE 5 Mean Frequencies Child Strategy Use and Correct Performance for the Cartoon Character

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90 Current Psychology / Spring 1993

FIGURE 7 Mean Frequencies for Child Strategy Use and Correct Performance for the Zoo Scene Game

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games (see Figures 5-7). In the Cartoon task the children used more rehearsal type strategies, (M=50.6) than nonverbal strategies (M=7.7).

In the Photo task (Figure 6) the children used more nonverbal strategies (M=16.9) than rehearsal strategies (M=7.7).

In the Zoo scene task (Figure 7) the children used more nonverbal strategies (M=13.3) than rehearsal strategies (M=I 1).

To address the second issue, intercorrelations between strategy use and correct per- formance were examined for each task.

For the Cartoon task, using rehearsal as a strategy was significantly and strongly associated with correct performance (r=.72,p<.001), as was using nonverbal strategies (r=.86,p<.001). For the Photo task rehearsal strategy use and correct performance were moderately related (r=.44,p<.02); however a strongly significant relationship emerged from nonverbal strategy use and correct performance (r=.90,p<.001). A similar pattern emerged for the Zoo task where rehearsal and correct performance were moderately associated (r=.48,p<.01) and nonverbal strategy use and correct performance (r=.74,p<.001) were strongly related.

Harris & Hamidullah 91

DISCUSSION

The general goal of this study was to explore the mechanisms employed by mothers as they assisted their children in developing self-regulatory memory skills.

The pattern is clear that preteaching instructions vary in complexity depending on whether the mother is teaching her child to remember rote, sequential or spatial infor- mation.

For the most part, mothers began teaching the cartoon game by naming each of the characters and then asking the child such focus type questions as "what is this?" and finally providing the answer "This is a little girl." In contrast, they provided brief instructions prior to teaching both the spatial and sequential tasks. Typically the in- structions were embedded in a story-like context and delivered in the form of episodic memory (we're going to wrap a gift for daddy, we're going to wrap a gift to go to a birthday party or, we're going to wrap a gift for Christmas, you've been to the Zoo before).

In terms of memory strategy use, mothers overwhelmingly relied on using rehearsal strategies and nonverbal strategies regardless of whether they were teaching names, sequences or locations. Among the more specific findings, mothers used more re- hearsal strategies followed by nonverbal strategies when teaching the cartoon game. For example, in addition to repeating the names of the cartoon characters, the mothers would point at the cues on the cards (i.e., spots on the dog, lollipop in the little girl's mouth). Perhaps this combination of verbal and nonverbal strategies was determined by the mothers to be a "good strategy" model for facilitating the child's recall of difficult material (Schneider & Pressley, 1989).

The more interesting pattern comes from the mothers' use of functional strategies when teaching the sequential memory game and use of functional and physical strate- gies when teaching the spatial memory game. Mothers engaged in encoding the se- quential information at a semantic-descriptive level describing the purpose of each of the photographs (i.e., the scissors go next because they cut the paper, or the tape goes here after the paper to hold the paper on the box), while simultaneously pointing to the correct order. When teaching the spatial game, mothers provided such perceptual- physical information as the "tiger roars, the elephant is gray he goes next to the tiger who is yellow with stripes," while simultaneously holding or touching the animals.

This pattern of teaching suggests that mothers build a learning scaffold that is in part determined by the child's performance and in part determined by the nature of the material to be remembered.

In making the transition to "self-regulatory" functioning, the nature of the interac- tion between mothers and children appeared context dependent. More specifically, in learning to remember names, compared to their mothers' performance, the children were more likely to use rehearsal strategies than they were to use nonverbal, functional or physical strategies. Clearly, mothers were highly verbal and engaged in naming the cards and describing in some detail various perceptual cues on each of the cards as well as soliciting repetition from their children. What's interesting about this finding is

92 Current Psychology / Spring 1993

that using rehearsal demonstrates that the preschoolers do in fact use internal strate- gies. This evidence of strategy use is in sharp contrast to the finding of the experimen- tal memory literature suggesting that rehearsal as a strategy does not emerge until age 7 (See Kail, 1990, for review). Perhaps with adult guidance and in this case maternal assistance rehearsal strategy use in its rudimentary form emerges at an earlier age. The use of both rehearsal strategies and nonverbal strategies partially aided their recall of the names, indicating that children are in the initial phases of becoming self-regulatory in their use of memory strategies to remember rote information. On the other hand, in learning how to wrap a gift, the children used proportionately fewer rehearsal strategies and nonverbal strategies in comparison to maternal strategy use. Again, mothers were verbally oriented to their children to remember to order. However, in this case, they were not requiring verbal repetition but were requiring such nonverbal behavior as pointing or touching the correct order. Moreover, the children's use of nonverbal strategies was effective in aiding their recall of the correct order of wrapping a gift. Indicating that the children were using these nonverbal behaviors strategically.

Finally, in comparing mother and child performance in learning to remember the location of zoo animals the following pattern emerged: (1) The children used propor- tionately fewer rehearsal strategies and nonverbal strategies than their mothers and (2) their use of strategies was more effective in aiding their recall of the information than in the other two tasks. Apparently the children were receptive to maternal input and able to engage in strategic behaviors to help them remember spatial information.

The focus of this study was to examine the transactions occurring while mothers were engaged in teaching their children to remember rote, sequential and spatial infor- mation. Given the small sample size and the exploratory nature of the research, the generalizability of these findings is limited. Nevertheless, several important findings emerged from the study. First, mothers vary in the quality of instruction they provide depending on whether they are teaching rote, sequential or spatial information. Sec- ond, mothers use a variety of task dependent behaviors to direct their child's attention to memory relevant aspects of the tasks (Justice, 1983). Third, the children are becoming aware of memory strategies and employing those strategies to aid their recall of names, order and location.

In addition, the findings suggest that young children can be led with adult guidance to employ strategies that are not yet within their strategy repetoire. More importantly, the findings underscore the significance of interaction in facilitating the growth of memory skills, and provide additional support for Vygotsky's "Cultural Theory" of cognitive growth.

NOTES

We gratefully acknowledge the statistical consultation of Joe Simpson and the data collection assistance of Denise Terrell, Chris Nelson and Heather Hill. We also thank the many mothers and preschoolers who participated in the research. Date of acceptance for publication: May 15, 1991. Address for correspon- dence: Yvette R. Harris, Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056.

Harris & Hamidullah 93

R E F E R E N C E S

Day, J., French, L., & Hall, L. (1985). Social influences on cognitive development. In Metacognition, Cog- nition and Human performance. Vol. 1 (pp. 22-53). New York: Academic Press.

Harris, Y. R., & Haller-Augsbach, L., (1991). Pre-metaphoric strategies in maternal teaching. Manuscript in preparation.

Harris, Y. R., & Miller, S. A. (1991). Predicting preschool memory performance from indirect and direct maternal strategy use. Manuscript in preparation.

Horn-Rather, H. (1980). The role of social context in memory development. In M. Perlmutter (Ed.), New Directions for ChiM Development, Vol. 10: Children's Memory. (.pp. 49-67).

Justice, E. (April, 1983). Parental behaviors in memory relevant settings: How parents teach children to remember. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research and Child Development, Detroit, MI.

Kail, R. (1990). The development of memory in children. New York: W. H. Freeman. Moss, E. (1985). Transfer of metacognitive strategies in mother-child dyads. Paper presented at the meet-

ing of the Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto, Canada. Paris, S. G., Newman, R. S., & Jacobs, J. E. (1985). Social contexts and functions of children's remembering.

In C. J. Brainerd & M. Pressley (Eds.), The cognitive side of memory development. (pp. 81-115). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Rogoff, B., Ellis, S., & Gardner, W. (1984). Adjustment of adult-child instruction according to child's age and task. Developmental Psychology, 20, 193-199.

Schneider, W., & Pressley, M., (1989). Memory development between 2 and 20. New York: Springer-Verlag. Scott-Jones, D. (1987). Mother as teacher in families of high and low achieving long-income black first

graders. Journal of Negro Education, 56, pp. 21-34. Vygotsky, L. S. (1977). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press. Werstch, J. (1979). From social interaction to higher psychological processes: A clarification and applica-

tion of Vygotsky's theory. Human Development, 22, 1-22.

94 Current Psychology /Spring 1993

APPENDIX Reliability Coefficients for Maternal and Child Scoring Systems

Maternal Instruction Support

Cartoon Photo Zoo

Launch 100 100 100 Brief 100 100 100 Detailed 100 100 100

Maternal Strategies

Cartoon Photo Zoo

Nonverbal .98 .95 .97 Rehearsal .92 .96 .90 Functional 0 .87 .92 Physical .97 .94 .92

Child Strategies

Cartoon Photo Zoo

Nonverbal .83 .94 .80 Nonverbal Correct .77 .80 .80 Rehearsal .85 .90 .92 Rehearsal Correct .88 1.00 .83