Does Mother's Early Talk Impact Children's Inclusion of Time and Space Details in their Autobiographical Narratives? A 12- Year Longitudinal Study

In this longitudinal study we examined the developmental trajectory of children’s inclusion of WHEN (temporal) and WHERE (spatial) details in their autobiographical memory narratives from early childhood (25-, 40, and 65-months) into adolescence (12-years-old) and investigated the factors that led to this development. Results showed that children’s inclusion of time and space details were statistically significant over time, with development for time being steeper than development for space. Mother’s inclusions of time, but not space, details were significant over the early childhood period. Mother’s early inclusions of time, but not space, details were a predictor of children’s future talk for time. Conventional time knowledge task performance was also correlated with children’s future inclusions of time information. This is the first longitudinal study to examine children’s inclusion of time and space details across childhood and into adolescence, and to examine how early factors in childhood could predict future narrative behaviour.