Theme 2
Cognitions and emotions
Learning goals:
Vignette 1
▪ What is autobiographical memory?
▪ What are the differences in autobiographical memory between cultures?
▪ What are the differences between positive and negative memories in cultural context?
▪ What are the differences in content across cultures?
Conway et al. (2005). A cross-cultural investigation of autobiographical memory: On the
Universality and Cultural Variation of the Reminiscence Bump.
Autobiographical memory encompasses memory for personal experiences as well as knowledge of
the self and, consequently, is critical for personal identity and a functioning self-system. AM is the
psychological history of the individual self and it supports “mental time travel”: the recollective
experience of the self in the past. There is a different between self-systems:
- Independent focus: oriented to the individual. This features the early establishment of a
coherent, elaborate, emotionally charged, and self-focused autobiographical history. Has been
found to be characteristics of Western cultures.
- Interdependent focus: oriented to relationships with others. They show a later establishment
of a brief, skeletal, emotionally unexpressive, relation-centered autobiographical history. Has
been found in group form many East Asian cultures.
The purpose of the present study was to explore these memory and self-cross-cultural differences
further and, in particular, to examine an aspect of autobiographical memory that has often been
observed and that is known to be closely associated with self: namely, the reminiscence bump. This
occurs when individuals (aged about 35 years and older) recall specific memories or other types of
autobiographical knowledge across their life span in either free of cued recall. The life-span retrieval
curve consists of three components:
1. The period of childhood amnesia (from birth to approximately 5 years of age).
2. The period of the reminiscence bump (from 10-30 years).
3. The period of recency (from the present back to the period of the reminiscence bump).
The second periods relates to a period when a stable self-system finally forms as the individual
passes from adolescence into adulthood. The individual establishes personal goals that may endure
for many years, even across the life span, that constitute the central components of an integral self.
Possible explanations are:
- The memories are highly accessible from this period because they remain intricately linked to
the (older) self that serves as the foundation of autobiographical memory knowledge structures
persisting over the life span.
- Individuals may allocate a great amount of cognitive effort as they fluctuate between identity
formation and identity confusion. Such cognitive effort may render knowledge from this period
to be encoded into memory in more privileged ways than knowledge encoded at other points in
the life cycle.
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, In some Asian societies, entry into adulthood is considered to occur when the individual reaches
about the age of 30 years, when a stable social network is formed. Childhood and adolescence are
longer in these cultures and are not brought to the comparatively early close, at about the age of 18-
21 years, that occurs in Western cultures. This suggests that the bump may occur later (at an older
age) in those cultures in which the transition from adolescence to adulthood is culturally defined to
occur later (late 20s), rather than earlier (late teens, early 20s).
Present study
In this study they collected life-span retrieval curves from groups in Asian and Western societies and
compare the age periods at which the reminiscence bump occurs in the different groups. They also
compared the period of childhood amnesia as this may differ cross-culturally: groups with
independent self-focus may have more and earlier childhood memories than groups with
interdependent self-focus. Last, they examined differences in memory content, and this provides a
link to recent findings from cross-cultural memory research. Data about childhood memories
revealed that:
- Caucasian American young adults (college students) tend to be lengthy, detailed, focusing on
one’s own roles, predilections, and opinions. Often provide discrete, one-moment-in-time events
that are unique to the individual.
- Asians are often brief and centred on collective activities and social interaction. Tend to
describe general, routine events that often concert social conventions or formalities.
Method
They used 208 participants from Japan, Bangladesh, England, China, and the US. The age range was
from 38 to 60, with a mean age of 52. Participants had to recall the first memory that came to mind.
They weren’t allowed to recall memories from the past 12 months. In this study were no cues
present. They also had to date each memory at the end of the experiment.
Results
The three components of these curves – childhood amnesia, the reminiscence bump, and a period of
forgetting – account for more than 90% of the variance in this set of life-span retrieval curves.
Childhood Amnesia
- They found a reliable effect of country, because the US group recalled more memories from the
first 5 years of life than did any of the other groups. This shows that the effect is limited to North
Americans rather than Western culture as a whole.
- They also found a reliable effect of country for the period of 5 to 10, because the US group
recalled reliably more memories from this period than all other groups. This shows a general
trend by US participants to recall more memories from childhood than do other nationalities.
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