Comparison of Earliest and Later Autobiographical Memories in Young and Middle-Aged Adults

The current study examined earliest memories of young and middle-aged adults in comparison to a recent autobiographical memory and a free-report one from any life phase. These three types of memories were compared in terms of their memory characteristics such as vividness, emotionality, importance, confidence, and rehearsal frequency. A total of 319 young (18-30 years) and 112 middle-aged (40-65 years) adults completed the online survey. Results showed that earliest memories were rated either similar to or lower than later memories in their memory characteristics. More specifically, they received lower ratings than freereport memories in all memory characteristics whereas they did not significantly differ from recent memories only in importance and emotionality. In addition, free-report memories were highest in emotionality, importance and rehearsal frequency whereas recent memories were highest in vividness and confidence ratings. Compared to young adults, middle-aged adults provided higher ratings for all memory characteristics in general, and they further recalled earliest memories from an older age. Finally, the order of reporting the three types of memories (earliest memory first versus recent memory first) was examined with respect to its potential influence on memory characteristics and dating of the recalled memories. Results displayed no significant effect of the reporting order on memory characteristics. Dating of the earliest and free-report memories, however, was significantly affected by the reporting order. The mean age for earliest memories was higher when it was retrieved following the recent memory compared to the reporting order in which earliest memories are retrieved and reported first. Overall, results indicated that earliest memories are not particularly special compared to later memories (e.g., free-report memories) in terms of their memory characteristics, and they are vulnerable to experimental manipulation such as changing the reporting order just like other types of autobiographical memories.

[1]  N. Brown,et al.  Event Clusters: An Organization of Personal Events in Autobiographical Memory , 1998 .

[2]  Susan Bluck,et al.  A view on midlife development from life-span theory , 2001 .

[3]  Qi Wang.  Earliest Recollections of Self and Others in European American and Taiwanese Young Adults , 2006, Psychological science.

[4]  Martin A. Conway,et al.  Generation Identity and the Reminiscence Bump: Memory for Public and Private Events , 1999 .

[5]  S. Bluck,et al.  The relation of the conceptual self to recent and distant autobiographical memories , 2011, Memory.

[6]  J. Cohen-Mansfield,et al.  A Comparison of Three Types of Autobiographical Memories in Old-Old Age: First Memories, Pivotal Memories and Traumatic Memories , 2010, Gerontology.

[7]  Steve M. J. Janssen,et al.  The relation between verbal and visuospatial memory and autobiographical memory , 2015, Consciousness and Cognition.

[8]  A. Westman,et al.  Earliest Memories and Recall by Modality Usually Involve Recollections of Different Memories: Memories are Not Amodal , 1996, Perceptual and motor skills.

[9]  H. Hayne,et al.  Cross-cultural and gender differences in childhood amnesia , 2000, Memory.

[10]  Burcu Demiray,et al.  You Get What You Need , 2010 .

[11]  Dorthe Berntsen,et al.  The cultural life script and life story chapters contribute to the reminiscence bump , 2008, Memory.

[12]  S. Bluck,et al.  Young and Older Adults' Expression of Emotional Experience: Do Autobiographical Narratives Tell a Different Story? , 2004 .

[13]  J. Harackiewicz,et al.  The earliest recollection: A new survey , 1982 .

[14]  西平 直,et al.  アイデンティティとライフサイクル = Identity and the life cycle , 2011 .

[15]  M. Mullen.  Earliest recollections of childhood: a demographic analysis , 1994, Cognition.

[16]  Qi Wang,et al.  The Fate of Childhood Memories: Children Postdated Their Earliest Memories as They Grew Older , 2016, Front. Psychol..

[17]  Memory for the Events of Early Childhood , 1999 .

[18]  E. Tulving.  Memory and consciousness. , 1985 .

[19]  N. Brown,et al.  Forward telescoping: the question matters. , 1998, Memory.

[20]  K. Nelson,et al.  Making Memories: The Influence of Joint Encoding on Later Recall by Young Children , 1994, Consciousness and Cognition.

[21]  H. Hayne,et al.  Defining the boundary of childhood amnesia , 2008, Memory.

[22]  G. J. Dudycha,et al.  Childhood memories: a review of the literature. , 1941 .

[23]  M. Howes,et al.  Early childhood memories: Accuracy and affect , 1993, Cognition.

[24]  Laura L. Carstensen,et al.  Evidence for a Life-Span Theory of Socioemotional Selectivity , 1995 .

[25]  W. Hirst,et al.  The earliest memory in individuals raised in either traditional and reformed kibbutz or outside the kibbutz , 2005, Memory.

[26]  Eliciting adults’ earliest memories: Does it matter how we ask the question? , 2007, Memory.

[27]  M. Hindelang,et al.  A consideration of telescoping and memory decay biases in victimization surveys , 1977 .

[28]  Timothy D. Ritchie,et al.  Why people rehearse their memories: Frequency of use and relations to the intensity of emotions associated with autobiographical memories , 2009, Memory.

[29]  M. Pasupathi,et al.  Reflecting on self-relevant experiences: adult age differences. , 2010, Developmental psychology.

[30]  Joseph M. Fitzgerald,et al.  Vivid Memories and the Reminiscence Phenomenon: The Role of a Self Narrative , 1988 .

[31]  D. Rubin,et al.  Distribution of important and word-cued autobiographical memories in 20-, 35-, and 70-year-old adults. , 1997, Psychology and aging.

[32]  J. Brockmeier,et al.  Autobiographical Remembering as Cultural Practice: Understanding the Interplay between Memory, Self and Culture , 2002 .

[33]  B. Fredrickson,et al.  Choosing social partners: how old age and anticipated endings make people more selective. , 1990, Psychology and aging.

[34]  M. Conway,et al.  The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. , 2000, Psychological review.

[35]  Henry M. Wellman,et al.  Accuracies and inaccuracies in autobiographical memories , 1986 .

[36]  Natalie C. Ebner,et al.  Developmental changes in personal goal orientation from young to late adulthood: from striving for gains to maintenance and prevention of losses. , 2006, Psychology and aging.

[37]  Steve M. J. Janssen,et al.  Memory for time: How people date events , 2006, Memory & cognition.

[38]  Richard M. Lerner,et al.  Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development, Vol. 1, 6th ed. , 2006 .

[39]  J. A. Robinson,et al.  First Experience Memories: Contexts and Functions in Personal Histories , 1992 .

[40]  K. Multhaup,et al.  The wane of childhood amnesia for autobiographical and public event memories , 2005, Memory.

[41]  A. Tekcan,et al.  Urban–rural differences in children's earliest memories , 2017, Memory.

[42]  U. Staudinger,et al.  Life Span Theory in Developmental Psychology , 2007 .

[43]  L. Carstensen,et al.  Taking time seriously. A theory of socioemotional selectivity. , 1999, The American psychologist.

[44]  David C. Rubin,et al.  Cultural life scripts structure recall from autobiographical memory , 2004, Memory & cognition.

[45]  J. A. Robinson,et al.  Fragment memories mark the end of childhood amnesia , 2005, Memory & cognition.

[46]  J. Gardiner.  Functional aspects of recollective experience , 1988, Memory & cognition.

[47]  J. Heckhausen.  Adaptation and resilience in midlife , 2001 .

[48]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  Phenomenal characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined autobiographical events. , 1988, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[49]  S. Gülgöz,et al.  Consistency of adults’ earliest memories across two years , 2019, Memory.

[50]  E. Kensinger.  Remembering the Details: Effects of Emotion , 2009, Emotion review : journal of the International Society for Research on Emotion.

[51]  R. Schmitt.  [Stages of life]. , 1950, L' Homeopathie francaise.

[52]  M. L. Howe,et al.  When Autobiographical Memory Begins. , 2003 .

[53]  Joseph M. Fitzgerald,et al.  The distribution of self-narrative memories in younger and older adults: Elaborating the self-narrative hypothesis , 1996 .

[54]  M. Eacott,et al.  The offset of childhood amnesia: memory for events that occurred before age 3. , 1998, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[55]  U. Neisser,et al.  Childhood amnesia and the beginnings of memory for four early life events. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[56]  Martin A. Conway,et al.  The Self and Autobiographical Memory: Correspondence and Coherence , 2004 .

[57]  Gerald L. Clore,et al.  With Sadness Comes Accuracy; With Happiness, False Memory , 2005, Psychological science.

[58]  J. Fitzgerald,et al.  Memory and Affect: Autobiographical Memory Distribution and Availability in Normal Adults and Recently Detoxifed Alcoholics , 1999 .

[59]  Alisha C. Holland,et al.  Emotion and autobiographical memory. , 2010, Physics of life reviews.

[60]  J. D. Bonvillian,et al.  Early Childhood Memories in Deaf and Hearing College Students. , 1989 .

[61]  S. Bluck,et al.  Examining the life story account of the reminiscence bump: Why we remember more from young adulthood , 2009, Memory.

[62]  D C Rubin,et al.  The distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan , 1997, Memory & cognition.

[63]  Robyn Fivush,et al.  Children remember childhood: implications for childhood amnesia , 1998 .

[64]  David B. Pillemer,et al.  Momentous Events and the Life Story , 2001 .

[65]  L. Levine,et al.  Autobiographical remembering and hypermnesia: a comparison of older and younger adults. , 1999, Psychology and aging.

[66]  John J. Skowronski,et al.  Telescoping in dating naturally occurring events , 1988, Memory & cognition.

[67]  D. Rubin,et al.  Emotionally charged autobiographical memories across the life span: the recall of happy, sad, traumatic, and involuntary memories. , 2002, Psychology and aging.

[68]  Margie E. Lachman,et al.  Maintaining a sense of control in later life. , 1994 .

[69]  C. Keyes,et al.  The structure of psychological well-being revisited. , 1995, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[70]  Jaap M. J. Murre,et al.  Reminiscence Bump in Autobiographical Memory: Unexplained by Novelty, Emotionality, Valence, or Importance of Personal Events , 2008, Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[71]  Elif Yildirim,et al.  Childhood Amnesia: Factors Related to the Age of First Childhood Memory , 2018, Psikoloji Çalışmaları / Studies in Psychology.

[72]  Leonard W. Poon,et al.  Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best , 1998, Memory & cognition.

[73]  Christopher D. B. Burt,et al.  Retrieval characteristics of autobiographical memories: Event and date information , 1992 .

[74]  A D Baddeley,et al.  Telescoping is not time compression: A model , 1989, Memory & cognition.

[75]  M. Mather,et al.  Aging and motivated cognition: the positivity effect in attention and memory , 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[76]  Ursula M. Staudinger,et al.  Life Reflection: A Social–Cognitive Analysis of Life Review , 2001 .

[77]  C. Peterson,et al.  Recounting the same events again and again: children's consistency across multiple interviews , 2001 .

[78]  Qi Wang,et al.  Culture effects on adults' earliest childhood recollection and self-description: implications for the relation between memory and the self. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[79]  A J Wilkins,et al.  Scale effects in memory for the timeof events , 1985, Memory & cognition.

[80]  P. Bauer,et al.  Assumptions of infantile amnesia: are there differences between early and later memories? , 1999, Memory.

[81]  Robyn Fivush,et al.  Constructing narrative, emotion, and self in parent–child conversations about the past , 1994 .

[82]  Samuel D Gosling,et al.  Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample. , 2011, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[83]  A. Freund,et al.  Midlife Crisis: A Debate , 2009, Gerontology.

[84]  John H. Mace.  The act of remembering : toward an understanding of how we recall the past , 2010 .

[85]  Qi Wang,et al.  Your earliest memory may be earlier than you think: prospective studies of children's dating of earliest childhood memories. , 2014, Developmental psychology.

[86]  S. Gülgöz,et al.  Is the Road Still Bumpy Without the Most Frequent Life Events , 2017 .

[87]  C. Ryff.  Possible selves in adulthood and old age: a tale of shifting horizons. , 1991, Psychology and aging.

[88]  Richard C. Atkinson,et al.  Human Memory: A Proposed System and its Control Processes , 1968, Psychology of Learning and Motivation.

[89]  K. Trzesniewski,et al.  Self-Esteem Development Across the Lifespan , 2005 .