Fivush continued her education at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she obtained a PhD in Developmental in 1983, under the supervision of Katherine Nelson.
[13] From 1983 to 1984, Fivush was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Diego, where she collaborated with Jean Mandler on studies of young children's development of categories[14] and their understanding of temporal sequences.
[15] Throughout her career Fivush has focused on the development of autobiographical memory and its connection to parent-child conversational practices, gender, and self-identity.
This social interactionist approach is based on a dialectical model in which the child internalizes adult thought through participation in joint activities where memories are experienced and shared.
Hence parent-guided reminiscing helps children to organize, interpret, and evaluate past experiences in ways that give them the chance to cultivate their sense of self.
Of these two maternal speech styles, elaboration has been found to be beneficial for children's development of autobiographical memory, literacy, narrative skills, theory of mind, and understanding of self and emotion.
For example, Fivush and colleagues observed that mothers talked more about emotions with girls than boys, especially when those conversations concerned experiences of sadness.