© 2008 The International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development

An emerging theme in studies of children’s memory for past experiences concerns the important role of parent–child conversational interactions in fostering developmental changes in skills for remembering (see Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006; Ornstein, Haden, & Hedrick, 2004). Over the preschool years, children become increasingly facile in searching memory and reporting that which they have retrieved. Moreover, recent research suggests that verbal exchanges with adults about the past provide opportunities for children to gain valuable experi-ence in the retrieval of information in response to explicit probes, as well as in the use of language to report what has been remembered. From this perspective, then, a detailed examination of early reminiscing between parents and children is important to characterize adequately the development of event memory