Earliest memories have been of interest since the late 1800s, when it was first noted that most adults do not have memories from the first years of life (so-called childhood amnesia). Several characteristics of adults’ earliest memories have been investigated, including emotional content, the perspective from which they are recalled, and vividness. The focus of the present research was a feature of early memories heretofore relatively neglected in the literature, namely, their consistency. Adults reported their earliest memories 2 to 4 times over a 4-year period. Reports of earliest memories were highly consistent in the events identified as the bases for earliest memories, the reported age at the time of the event, and in terms of qualities of the narrative descriptions. These findings imply stability in the boundary that marks the offset of childhood amnesia, as well as in the beginning of a continuous sense of self over time.

Regardless of age, making healthy lifestyle choices is prudent. Despite that, individuals of all ages sometimes have difficulty choosing the healthy option. We argue that individuals' view of the future and position in the life span affects their current lifestyle choices. We capture the multidimensionality of future thinking by assessing 3 types of future perspective. Younger and older men and women (N = 127) reported global future time perspective, future health perspective, and perceived importance of future health-related events. They also rated their likelihood of making healthy lifestyle choices. As predicted, older participants indicated greater intention to make healthy choices in their current life than did younger participants. Compared to younger participants, older participants reported shorter global future time perspective and anticipated worse future health but perceived future health-related events as more important. Having a positive view of one's future health and seeing future health-related events as important were related to greater intention to make healthy lifestyle choices, but greater global future time perspective was not directly related to healthy choices. However, follow-up analyses suggested that greater global future time perspective indirectly affected healthy choices via a more positive view of future health. None of these relations were moderated by age. Individuals' perspective on the future is shown to be an important multidimensional construct affecting everyday healthy lifestyle choices for both younger and older adults. Implications for encouraging healthy choices across the adult life span are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Sosyal medya her yaştan insan için hayatın önemli bir parçası haline gelmiştir. Sosyal medya platformlarında her gün yeni deneyimler yaşanmakta ve gerçek yaşamdaki deneyimler bu platformlarda paylaşılmaktadır. Metin, fotoğraf ve video gibi alışılmışın dışında içeriklere sahip bu olayların gerçek yaşam olaylarından farklılaşması olasıdır. Bu farklılıkların anlaşılması sosyal medya kullanımının otobiyografik bellek süreçleri üzerindeki etkisinin tespiti açısından önemli görünmektedir. Güncel çalışmada sosyal medyada ve gerçek yaşamda deneyimlenmiş olayların fenomenolojik özellikleri ve algılanan işlevleri arasındaki farklılıkların tespit edilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Bu amaçla genç yetişkinlerden gerçek yaşamda ve sosyal medyada deneyimledikleri birer olay yazmaları ve bu olayların fenomenolojik özellikleri (duygusal değerlik, duygusal şiddet, önem, gönüllü ve istemsiz hatırlama, kimlik ve yaşam öyküsüne merkezilik) ve işlevlerini (yansıtıcı, sosyal, üretici, ruminatif) puanlamaları istenmiştir. Bulgular sosyal medya olayları için hissedilen duyguların şiddetinin gerçek yaşam olaylarından daha düşük, daha az önemli, kimlik ve yaşam hikayesi için daha az merkezi olarak algılandığını göstermiştir. Ayrıca bu olayların istemli ve istemsiz olarak gerçek yaşam olaylarından daha az sıklıkla geri çağrıldığı raporlanmıştır. Son olarak sosyal medya olaylarının gerçek yaşam olaylarından daha az işlevsel algılandığı görülmüştür. Çalışma otobiyografik belleğe kaydedilen sosyal medya olaylarının niteliksel ve işlevsel açıdan gerçek yaşam olaylarından farklılaştığını göstermektedir. Sonuç olarak, benlik algısının ve sosyal ilişkilerin ve nihayetinde psikolojik sağlığın bu yeni otobiyografik bellek bağlamından etkilenmesi mümkün görünmektedir.

The use of social media continues to increase in modern cultures in recent years. This new context leads to creating a virtual self, which somewhat differs from the real self. Further, social relations are set and maintained predominantly in this new context. There is no doubt that social media does not only affect individuals' social relations but also their cognitive skills by pulling them into new situations that they are unfamiliar with. In this new context, content coded in social media can be remembered in real life, and content coded in real life can be remembered in social media. This new context, where mostly real-life stories are shared, is likely to strongly affect the autobiographical memory processes of individuals. Past research suggests that social media affects autobiographical memory processes both directly (phenomenological characteristics, functions) and indirectly through cognitive processes (eg, attention, working memory, transitive memory). Studies about its indirect effects indicate that people with limited attention and working memory capacity have difficulty processing the high number of stimuli offered by social media. Given that the long-term memory capacity is not limited, it is plausible to expect that some of the contents are encoded into the memory; however, problems may occur in the storage and retrieval processes. Studies about the direct effect of social media show that the phenomenological characteristics (number of details, accuracy, emotional content) and functions (self, social, directing, therapeutic) of events experienced or shared on social media differ from real-life events. This theoretical review discusses the effects of social media use on cognitive processes related to memory processes and more specifically on the phenomenological and functional characteristics of autobiographical memory. To recognize and prevent potential psychological issues that may emerge in relation to this new setting, it appears essential to comprehend how social media affects autobiographical memory, which is essential for self-perception.

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