Thinking and talking about the past: Why remember?

Abstract

Following functional theory, the focus of this paper is to examine individuals' reports of the functions that thinking and talking about the past serves in their daily lives. Younger and older men and women provided reports of the frequency with which they think and talk about their personal past to serve self-continuity, social-bonding and directing-behaviour functions. Younger and older adults endorsed the same frequency of using the past to maintain social bonds. In keeping with the context of their developmental life phase, including the need to forge self-concept clarity and their more open-ended perspective of the future, younger adults reported more often using autobiographical memory to create self-continuity and direct future plans.

The distribution and the functions of autobiographical memories: Why do older adults remember autobiographical memories from their youth?

“…While some studies found no age differences (e.g. Bluck and Alea 2009;Webster and Gould 2007), others reported an age-related decrease in the use of AMs for social functions (e.g. Alea et al 2014a;Harris et al 2014;Wolf and Zimprich 2014).…”

“…According to the before-mentioned life script account (Berntsen and Rubin 2004;Rubin and Berntsen 2003), the majority of important transitional events are expected to occur in young adulthood. Correspondingly, the use of AM for directive purposes has been found to be most frequent during young adulthood (Bluck and Alea 2009;Harris et al 2014;Webster and Gould 2007;Wolf and Zimprich 2014). At the same time, experiences from young adulthood may serve directive purposes throughout the lifespan.…”

“…Therefore, adolescent and early adult years are associated with the frequent use of AMs in order to create self-continuity (e.g. Bluck and Alea 2009). Although a number of cross-sectional studies have shown that the use of AMs for self-functions decreases from young adulthood onwards (Harris et al 2014;Webster and Gould 2007;Wolf and Zimprich 2014), AMs from one's youth may serve to maintain a sense of self-continuity throughout the lifespan, that is, also in older age (see the identity-formation account).…”

“…Rubin et al 1986). In turn, the primary concern of a functional perspective on AM is to ask why individuals remember their personal past (Bluck and Alea 2009), and the use of AMs in daily life has been categorised into three broad functions, namely the self-, directive, and social functions of AM (e.g. Bluck and Alea 2002;Cohen 1998;Pillemer 1992).…”

Why I remember that: The influence of contextual factors on beliefs about everyday memory

“…There has been some empirical work in which reported functions of autobiographical remembering utilizing psychometric measures have been examined, including the TALE (Bluck & Alea, 2009;Bluck et al, 2005) and the RFS (Webster, 1993(Webster, , 2002. These measures largely support the notion of three broad uses of remembering, although the RFS includes functions that seem to go beyond these functions, including bitterness revival and boredom reduction (see Bluck & Alea, 2002).…”