Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: What Kind of Science Is Developmental Psychology?
- Part One The Developing Child: Global and Historical Perspectives
- 1 The Globalization of Developmental Psychology
- 2 A Socio-historical Perspective on Autobiographical Memory Development
- 3 Toward a Better Story of Psychology: Sheldon White's Contributions to the History of Psychology, A Personal Perspective
- Part Two Designing Child and Family Policies
- Part Three Designing Child Health Policies
- Part Four Designing Effective Learning Environments for Children and Adolescents
- Index
- References
2 - A Socio-historical Perspective on Autobiographical Memory Development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: What Kind of Science Is Developmental Psychology?
- Part One The Developing Child: Global and Historical Perspectives
- 1 The Globalization of Developmental Psychology
- 2 A Socio-historical Perspective on Autobiographical Memory Development
- 3 Toward a Better Story of Psychology: Sheldon White's Contributions to the History of Psychology, A Personal Perspective
- Part Two Designing Child and Family Policies
- Part Three Designing Child Health Policies
- Part Four Designing Effective Learning Environments for Children and Adolescents
- Index
- References
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 ChangeResearch, History and Policy, pp. 34 - 58Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
References
, (1994). Cross-cultural differences in the self concept. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 25 2, 273–283CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1998). The Body Project: An Intimate History of Adolescent Girls. New York: Vintage BooksGoogle Scholar
(2002). Bringing Learning to Life: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education. New York: Teachers College PressGoogle Scholar
Ceci, S. J., & Leichtman, M. D. (1992). Memory, cognition and learning: Developmental and ecological considerations. In & (Eds.), Handbook of Neuropsychology. Holland: ElsevierGoogle Scholar
Choi, S. H. (1992). Communicative socialization processes: Korea and Canada. In , , & (Eds.), Innovations in Cross-Cultural Psychology (pp. 103–122). Amsterdam: Swets & ZeitlingerGoogle Scholar
(2000). Childhood, Memory and Autobiography in Holland: From the Golden Age to Romanticism. New York: St. Martin's PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (1941). Childhood memories: A review of the literature. Psychological Review 38, 668–682Google Scholar
(1994). A comparative study of personality characteristics between only and nononly children in primary schools in Xian. Psychological Science 17, 2, 70–74 (in Chinese)Google Scholar
(2002). Using individualism and collectivism to compare cultures – A critique of the validity and measurement of the constructs: Comment on Oyserman et al. (2002). Psychological Bulletin 128, 78–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiske, A. P., Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R., & Nisbett, R. E. (1998). The cultural matrix of social psychology. In , , & (Eds.), The Handbook of Social Psychology (Vol. 2) (4th ed.) (pp. 915–981). Boston: McGraw HillGoogle Scholar
, & (1988). Style and structure in mother–child conversations about the past. Discourse Processes 11, 337–355CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenwald, A. G., & Pratkanis, A. R. (1984). The self. In & (Eds.), Handbook of Social Cognition (Vol. 3) (pp. 129–178). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumGoogle Scholar
(1998). Reminiscing with different children: Relating maternal stylistic consistency and sibling similarity in talk about the past. Developmental Psychology 34, 99–114CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, & (1999). Origins of autobiographical memory. Developmental Psychology 35, 1338–1348CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , & (1998). Autobiographical memory in Korean, Chinese and American children. Developmental Psychology 34, 701–703CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
(2001). Working, struggling, becoming: Stalin-era autobiographical texts. The Russian Review 60, 340–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1989). Continuity and variation in Chinese patterns of socialization. Journal of Marriage and the Family 51, 149–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (1999). Generation identity and the reminiscence bump: Memory for public and private events. Journal of Adult Development 6, 21–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , & (1986). Comparative study of behavior qualities of only children and sibling children. Child Development 57, 2, 357–361CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kassoff, L. B., & Wang, Q. (2002). Early autobiographical memories in Americans and French: Effects of culture on memory and self. Unpublished manuscript
, & (1954). An empirical investigation of self-attitudes. American Sociological Review 19, 68–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, L. C. (1992). Daycare in the People's Republic of China. In & (Eds.) Child Care in Context: Cross-cultural Perspectives (pp. 355–392). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumGoogle Scholar
Leichtman, M. D., Bhogle, S., Sankaranarayanan, A., & Hobeika, D. (2003). Autobiographical memory and children's narrative environments in Southern India and the Northern United States. Unpublished manuscript
Leichtman, M. D., Holmes, E., & Pillemer, D. B. (2003). A clown came to the class: The impact of conversation and language status on children's event memories. Unpublished manuscript
, , , , & (2000). When Baby Maisy came to school: Mothers' interview styles and preschoolers' event memories. Cognitive Development 15, 1, 99–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leichtman, M. D., Wang, Q., & Pillemer, D. B. (2003). Cultural variations in interdependence and autobiographical memory: Lessons from Korea, China, India and the United States. In & (Eds.), Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of a Narrative Self: Developmental and Cultural Perspectives (pp. 73–98). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumGoogle Scholar
, & (1989). Misinformation and memory: The creation of new memories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 118, 100–104CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, & (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review 98, 224–253CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCabe, A., & Peterson, C. (1991). Getting the story: A longitudinal study of parental styles in eliciting narratives and developing narrative skill. In & (Eds.), Developing Narrative Structure (pp. 217–257). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumGoogle Scholar
, , , & (1997). Personal storytelling as a medium of socialization in Chinese and American families. Child Development 68, 557–568CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
(1994). Earliest recollections of childhood: A demographic analysis. Cognition 52, 55–79CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, & (1995). The cultural context of talk about the past: Implications for the development of autobiographical memory. Cognitive Development 10, 407–419CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1992). Emergence of autobiographical memory at age 4. Human Development 35, 172–177CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , & (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin 128, 3–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , & (1993). Mother–child conversations about the past: Relationships of style and memory over time. Cognitive Development 8, 403–430CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schudson, M. (1995). Dynamics of distortion in collective memory. In (Ed.), Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains and Societies Reconstruct the Past (pp. 346–364). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University PressGoogle Scholar
Sheingold, K., & Tenney, Y. J. (1982). Memory for a salient childhood event. In (Ed.), Memory Observed (pp. 201–212). San Francisco: FreemanGoogle Scholar
(1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-construals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20, 580–591CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1971). Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California PressGoogle Scholar
, & (2002). Culture structures the environment for development. Human Development 45, 270–274CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , & (1991). Some tests of the distinction between private and collective self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60, 649–655CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1989). The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts. Psychological Review 96, 506–520CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogel, E. F. (1966), From friendship to comradeship: The change in personal relations in Communist China. In (Ed.), China under Mao: Politics Take Command. Cambridge, MA: MITGoogle Scholar
(1948). The frequency and affective character of childhood memories. Psychological Monographs 62, 1–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2001a). “Did you have fun?”: American and Chinese mother–child conversations about shared emotional experiences. Cognitive Development 16, 693–715CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2001b). Cultural effects on adults' earliest childhood recollection and self-description: Implications for the relation between memory and the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, 220–233CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2003). Infantile amnesia reconsidered: A cross-cultural analysis. Memory 11, 65–80CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
(2004). The emergence of cultural self-construct: Autobiographical memory and self-description in American and Chinese children. Developmental Psychology 40 (1), 3–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (2002). Autobiographical remembering as cultural practice: Understanding the interplay between memory, self and culture. Culture and Psychology 8, 45–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (2004). The stories we keep: Autobiographical memory in American and Chinese middle-aged adults. Journal of Personality, 72(5), 911–938CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wang, Q., & Hsueh, Y. (2000). Parent-child interdependence in Chinese families: Change and continuity. In , , & (Eds.), The Changing Family and Child Development (pp. 60–69). Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
, & (2000). Same beginnings, different stories: A comparison of American and Chinese children's narratives. Child Development 71, 1329–1346CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wang, Q., Cole, J., & Lord, H. (2003). Self-narratives in Euro-American and Malagasy adults. Unpublished raw data
, , & (2000). Sharing memories and telling stories: American and Chinese mothers and Their 3-year-olds. Memory 8, 159–177CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , & (1998). Childhood memory and self-description: The impact of growing up an only child. Cognition 69, 73–103CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
- 2
- Cited by