CONSISTENCY OF EARLIEST MEMORIES: If the Event is the same, is the Story (or memory)? Pubblico

Abstract

Earliest memories, as our first memories in which we have a "self" and an ability to recode a
memory after childhood amnesia, has rarely been questioned for the consistency of memories
and their content. In order to fill this gap and provide a new direction to the earliest memory
literature, in the present research, we examined the consistency of adults' earliest memories over
a 4-year longitudinal study and also sought to determine some of the factors associated with
consistency. In order to measure consistency, we created a new consistency scheme and coded
all memories for narrative breadth and coherence to observe if these facts affect the consistency
scores. Results indicated 1) adults reported the same event as their earliest memory almost each
time they were asked; 2) these events on the other hand, contain a few common components
which stayed stable in each report; 3) completeness was not a determiner of stability whereas
coherence prevented time and place information from being lost over time. Implications of these
findings are discussed as a source for understanding the nature and specialty of earliest
memories' content.

Table of Contents

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... III
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................... IV
INTRODUCTION ...................................................... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
METHOD .................................................................................................................................. 7
PARTICIPANTS ..........................................................................................................................7
PROCEDURE ..............................................................................................................................7
CODING ....................................................................................................................................7
Consistency of the event ........................................................................................................8
RESULTS .................................................................................................................................. 9
DISCUSSION .......................................................................................................................... 14
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................ 19
TABLES AND FIGURES ....................................................................................................... 30
APPENDICES ......................................................................................................................... 36
APPENDIX1: SUMMARY TABLE OF NARRATIVE BREADTH (WH) CODES AND DETAILS OF THE
MAIN COMPONENTS FOR CONSISTENCY SCHEME..................................................................... 22
APPENDIX2: AN EXAMPLE WORKSHEET FOR CONSISTENCY CONTENT CODING OF A MEMORY .. 25
APPENDIX3: AN EXAMPLE FOR THE 2ND SPREAD SHEET OF CONSISTENCY CODING FOR A
PARTICIPANT'S MEMORY. ........................................................................................................ 26
APPENDIX4: AN EXAMPLE OF A PARTICIPANT'S SCORES FOR BREADTH CODES. .......................... 27
APPENDIX 5: THE CRITERIA FOR EACH SCORE FOR NACCS CATEGORIES ACCORDING TO THE
REESE ET AL. (2011) ............................................................................................................... 28
APPENDIX6: ............................................................................................................................ 30
AN EXAMPLE OF LEVELS OF NARRATIVE COHERENCE ON THE NACCS ..................................... 30

vi



List of Table and Figures

Table 1 ...................................................................................................................................... 31
Table 2 ...................................................................................................................................... 32

Figure 1: the Mean of Narrative Breadth (Wh) Scores ............................................................... 33
Figure 2: the Mean of the Naccs Scores ..................................................................................... 34
Figure 3: The Consistency Proportion Of Main Components the Event ..................................... 35
Figure 4: the consistency proportion of details (descriptions of main components) .................... 36

About this Master's Thesis

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Psychology
Degree	MA
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Cognitive
Parola chiave	consistency earliest memory
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Bauer, Patricia, Emory University
Committee Members	Craighead, Linda, Emory University Fivush, Robyn, Emory University

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