A Socio-historical Perspective on Autobiographical Memory Development

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511610400.004

2 - A Socio-historical Perspective on Autobiographical Memory Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009

Michelle D. Leichtman and

Qi Wang

Edited by

David B. Pillemer and

Sheldon H. White

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Michelle D. Leichtman: Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire
Qi Wang: Affiliation:
Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
David B. Pillemer: Affiliation:
University of New Hampshire
Sheldon H. White: Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts

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Summary

Introspection leaves the impression that personal event memories are private, self-generated products of an individual's experience in the world. When we reflect on the past, “we can accept with little question that biography or the lifetime is the appropriate or ‘natural’ frame for individual memory” (Schudson, 1995, p. 346). Historically, investigations of memory processes have resided at this phenomenologically justified level of analysis. For example, early studies focused on the nature of adults' childhood memories with limited reference to the particulars of history or other contextual factors situated outside the individual (e.g., Dudycha & Dudycha, 1941; Sheingold & Tenney, 1982; Waldfogel, 1948).

In the past several decades, memory researchers have gained an increasingly sophisticated perspective on context. Autobiographical memory offers a rich platform from which to view contextual effects, and research on the topic has benefited from this perspective. Currently, theory and burgeoning empirical evidence support the notion that both proximal and distal influences have the potential to shape autobiographical remembering in complex ways (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Ceci & Leichtman, 1992; Leichtman, Wang, & Pillemer, 2003; Wang, 2003).

In the present chapter, we consider context through an exceptionally broad lens. Our overarching goal is to identify the possible roles that socio-historical factors, including government policies and culturally shaped aspects of the social environment, play in shaping the personal event memories of individuals. Researchers have only recently begun to consider connections between such macro-level environmental elements and the personal sphere of autobiographical memory; thus, some of the ideas that follow are speculative.

Type: Chapter
Information: Developmental Psychology and Social Change
Research, History and Policy
, pp. 34 - 58

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511610400.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2005

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2 - A Socio-historical Perspective on Autobiographical Memory Development

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