Preschoolers' autobiographical memory specificity relates to their emotional adjustment

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) has robust associations with psychopathology. As such, understanding the development of AMS (or its inverse, overgeneral autobiographical memory) and how it may be unique from other aspects of memory performance is important. In particular, it is unclear whether child AMS is distinct from autobiographical memory performance in other contexts, such as during mother-child reminiscing, and whether reduced AMS during early childhood is associated with emotional adjustment as found later in development. In this study, associations between children's AMS and memory performance during mother-child reminiscing were evaluated. Moreover, the contributions of each type of child memory performance to child internalizing and externalizing symptoms were examined. Participants included 95 mother-child dyads drawn from a diverse, low-income community. Children's ages ranged from 3.5 years to 6years. Dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about 4 past events, children participated in assessments of AMS, and mothers rated children's emotional adjustment. Path analysis results indicated that children's AMS was not significantly related to children's unique memory contributions during reminiscing. Child AMS was negatively associated with emotional symptoms, whereas child memory during reminiscing was not.