Children’s Recall of Storybook Events: Links With Attachment and Gender

The quality of the attachment bond between a child and a caregiver can have lasting effects on how the child perceives, interprets, and recalls events through the filtering of internal working models. Previous research has shown that secure children tend to recall emotional information better than insecure children. The current study examined the association between attachment and children’s recall with a sample of 81 children between the ages of 54 and 63 months. Mothers completed the Attachment Q-Set, and the researcher read a storybook with an emotional theme to the children. Children’s memory for the storybook details was assessed. Results indicated that, even after controlling for age, more-secure children were better able to recall more details overall. Girls also performed slightly better than boys, although this finding was marginally significant. Overall, the current findings suggest that less-secure children may have defensive processes that prevent them from remembering details from an emotion-laden storybook, which has developmental and educational implications