My Profile

Biography:

I have been studying children's personal narratives, or autobiographical stories about personal experience, for many years. Recently, it has become clear that children's oral narrative skills are related to literacy acquisition. Currently, we are engaged in an intervention program to help parents learn ways in which to foster their children's narrative skills prior to school entry. In addition, I investigate children's eyewitness memory for stressful experiences, specifically injuries serious enough to require hospital emergency room treatment. I and my collaborators have documented surprisingly good memory for such salient and distressing events in even quite young children.