The making of autobiographical memory: Intersections of culture, narratives and identity

Abstract

Autobiographical memory is a uniquely human form of memory that integrates individual experiences of self with cultural frames for understanding identities and lives. In this review, we present a theoretical and empirical overview of the sociocultural development of autobiographical memory, detailing the emergence of autobiographical memory during the preschool years and the formation of a life narrative during adolescence. More specifically, we present evidence that individual differences in parental reminiscing style are related to children's developing autobiographical narratives. Parents who structure more elaborated coherent personal narratives with their young children have children who, by the end of the preschool years, provide more detailed and coherent personal narratives, and show a more differentiated and coherent sense of self. Narrative structuring of autobiographical remembering follows a protracted developmental course through adolescence, as individuals develop social cognitive skills for temporal understanding and causal reasoning that allows autobiographical memories to be integrated into an overarching life narrative that defines emerging identity. In addition, adolescents begin to use culturally available canonical biographical forms, life scripts, and master narratives to construct a life story and inform their own autobiographical narrative identity. This process continues to be socially constructed in local interactions; we present exploratory evidence that parents help adolescents structure life narratives during coconstructed reminiscing and that adolescents use parents and families as a source for their own autobiographical content and structure. Ultimately, we argue that autobiography is a critical developmental skill; narrating our personal past connects us to our selves, our families, our communities, and our cultures.

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“…By other definitions, even this larger set of criteria would be considered insufficient to differentiate autobiographical from episodic memory. In the literature on self identity, for example, autobiographical memory is defined as a capacity that permits construction of a sequence of memories of temporally linked events, such as expressed in a life story or autobiography (e.g., Fivush, Habermas, Waters, & Zaman, 2011;Fivush & Zaman, 2014;Habermas & Bluck, 2000;McAdams, 2001; see also Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000;Thomsen, 2009). From this perspective, retrieval of an autobiographical memory involves autobiographical consciousness, defined as a form of consciousness of a present self who is different from-yet temporally linked to-the past self who experienced the event (Fivush, 2012; see also Fivush & Zaman, 2014).…”

“…Thus, developments in verbal and narrative skill herald cognitive benefits of rehearsal and organization, which are advantageous to memory. Beyond individual memories, developments in narrative skills also make possible construction of a life story or autobiography that weaves together the individual experiences of one's life into a sequence of temporally linked events (e.g., Brewer, 1980;Fivush et al, 2011;McAdams, 2001). Narrative evidence of this development becomes apparent only in adolescence (e.g., Bohn & Berntsen, 2008Fivush & Zaman, 2014;Habermas & Bluck, 2000).…”

A Review of Reminiscing in Early Childhood Settings and Links to Sustained Shared Thinking

“…These studies have found that parental variance in behavior during reminiscing-particularly the extent to which a parent is elaborative-relates to children's vocabulary (Peterson et al 1999), independent narrative skills (Reese et al 2010), autobiographical memory (Fivush et al 2011), and social and emotional skills (Goodvin and Romdall 2013;Haden and Ornstein 2009;Reese and Cleveland 2006). The strength of this evidence has led to the proposal that elaborative forms of reminiscing should constitute the basis of clinical interventions to develop children's language and memory skills (Wareham and Salmon 2006).…”

“…It is important to note that there are cultural differences in reminiscing and elaborative style (Fivush et al 2011;Reese and Neha 2015). In this article, for reasons of space and clarity, we focus solely on research in the Western context.…”

“…"Elaborative style" refers to a particular dimension of adults' language that has been assessed in reminiscing research. It is characterized by the use of open-ended questions, details, and embellished descriptions in ways that lead to episodes of co-constructed dialog with a strong sense of narrative thread (Fivush et al 2011).…”