Rate My Professor Elaine Reese

Professor Elaine Reese is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago, where she joined in 1993 and has accumulated over 30 years of university teaching experience at graduate and undergraduate levels. She earned her BA from Trinity University in Texas, MA, and PhD from Emory University in 1993. Her research specializes in the development of children's and adolescents' autobiographical memory, language, and literacy, as well as social influences on children's development, particularly how parents' and teachers' conversations enrich children's language and socioemotional development. Reese is the co-leader of Kia Tīmata Pai (To Start Well), a national intervention trial with BestStart early childhood centres funded by the Wright Family Foundation, and previously served as the Education Domain Leader on the longitudinal birth cohort study Growing Up in New Zealand. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and has secured grants from the Marsden Fund, the Children's Research Fund of the Ministry of Social Development, and the National Institute of Child Health and Development in the US.

Reese has authored over 130 peer-reviewed papers and popular books, including Tell Me a Story: Sharing Stories to Enrich Your Child's World (Oxford University Press, 2013) and How Stories Change Us: A Developmental Science of Stories from Fiction and Real Life (Oxford University Press, 2024). Notable publications include 'Elaborating on elaborations: Role of maternal reminiscing style in cognitive and socioemotional development' with R. Fivush and C.A. Haden (Child Development, 2006), 'Mother-child conversations about the past: Relationships of style and memory over time' with C.A. Haden and R. Fivush (Cognitive Development, 1993), 'Training mothers in elaborative reminiscing enhances children’s autobiographical memory and narrative' with R. Newcombe (Child Development, 2007), and recent articles such as 'Kia Tīmata Pai (Best start) video project: Effects of an oral language professional development program (ENRICH) on educator-toddler conversations' (Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2026) and 'Cohort profile: The New Zealand Best Start study (Kia Tīmata Pai)' (International Journal of Epidemiology, 2025). She edits the Journal of Cognition and Development and serves on editorial boards for Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Cognitive Development, Infant and Child Development, Narrative Inquiry, and Reading Research Quarterly. Her work, cited over 19,500 times, has advanced understanding of narrative skills and early education interventions.