Sociocultural theories of development privilege the role of parent–child conversation as a critical interpersonal context for cognitive and socioemotional development. Research on maternal reminiscing suggests that mothers differ on the elaborative nature of their reminiscing style. Individual differences in maternal elaborative style are thought to contribute to children’s cognitive development in at least 3 critical areas: (a) memory; (b) language; and (c) theory of mind (ToM). Further, mothers are thought to be more elaborative with daughters than sons. After more than 30 years of research on maternal reminiscing, there has yet to be a quantitative summary of the literature. As such, we conducted a series of meta-analyses to summarize the effect sizes present in the literature, focusing on the 3 domains listed above as well as the potential impact of child gender on maternal elaborative style. The mean age range for children was set to include 30–60 months; roughly the developmental onset of autobiographical memory. Given these criteria, k = 38 studies (51 independent samples) with N = 2,492 mother–child dyads were included in this meta-analysis. Results indicated that maternal elaborative style did not differ by child gender. However, elaboration was positively associated with child memory, child language ability, and ToM. Ethnicity significantly moderated maternal elaborations by child gender, such that samples with majority non-Caucasian mothers elaborated more with daughters than sons.
Research has shown that individuals use a combination of cultural life script events and historical events when dating personal memories, providing evidence for a cultural life script effect and Living-in-History (LiH) effect on the temporal organization of autobiographical memory. Yet, in contrast to life script events, the LiH effect has only been found for negative events such as war or natural disasters. Therefore, this study tested whether a positive historical event, here the fall of the Berlin Fall, also elicits a LiH effect and whether this effect would differ due to the subsequent changes in life. Comparing West and East Germans, we found a moderate LiH effect for the fall of the Berlin Wall in East Germans but not in West Germans. Yet, the LiH effect in East Germans did not relate to the perceived change in life or the valence of the historical event. Additionally, this study replicated the finding that life script events serve as temporal landmarks when navigating through one's autobiographical timeline.
Forced migration changes people’s lives and their sense of self-continuity fundamentally. One memory-based mechanism to protect the sense of self-continuity and psychological well-being is autobiographical meaning making, enabling individuals to explain change in personality and life by connecting personal experiences and other distant parts of life to the self and its development. Aiming to replicate and extend prior research, the current study investigated whether autobiographical meaning making has the potential to support the sense of self-continuity in refugees. We therefore collected life narratives from 31 refugees that were coded for autobiographical reasoning, self-event connections, and global narrative coherence. In line with prior research, results suggest that autobiographical meaning making relates to a higher sense of self-continuity and less psychological distress. Yet, if refugees experienced many continuing postdisplacement stressors in addition to their forced displacement, autobiographical meaning making was associated with higher self-discontinuity and greater psychological distress, especially with trauma-related symptoms such as memory intrusion and hyperarousal. Altogether, results indicate that autobiographical meaning making helps to compensate the effects of extreme biographical disruptions on the sense of self-continuity, as long as the stress caused by the biographical change is not overwhelming or too protracted.
Alexithymia encompasses difficulties in identifying and expressing feelings along with an externally oriented cognitive style. While previous studies found that higher alexithymia scores were related to an impaired memory for emotional content, no study so far investigated how alexithymia affects autobiographical narratives. Narrating personal events, however, is impaired in emotionally disturbed patients in that they tend to recall overgeneral descriptions instead of specific episodes, which impairs their narrative emotional processing. Adopting a qualitative approach, this pilot study explored autobiographical memory specificity, cognitive, perceptual and emotional word use, and narrative closure in eight alcohol-dependent participants scoring very high or low in alexithymia. High alexithymia participants showed no reduced memory specificity but impaired emotional processing and narrative elaboration, especially when talking about negative events. Presumably because of this we found no group differences regarding narrative closure. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive and emotional processing, avoidance strategies, and narrative psychology.
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