Family reminiscence scale: A measure of early communicative context

Abstract

We developed and validated the Family Reminiscence Scale (FARS) in which adults rate their frequency of reminiscing with their parents about childhood experiences. In three studies, we characterized how FARS was related to adults’ recollections of their earliest memories in different cultural contexts. First, we examined the factorial structure of FARS and obtained two factors of reminiscing: first-time events and general-recurrent events. In the second study, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted, in which we established measurement invariance across gender and age groups. In Study 3, we tested the factorial structure of FARS in an American sample to ensure cross-cultural invariance. We also showed that the two factors were differentially related to the phenomenology of earliest memories in samples from Turkey and United States (Study 2 & Study 3). Overall, FARS was found to be reliable and valid to measure for adult samples to assess the quality of the linguistic input during childhood. Predictive value of FARS has been shown across different gender, age, and culture groups, underlining the organizational role of the early communicative context in the phenomenology and linguistic style of adults’ early memories.

Keywords

• earliest memories; childhood amnesia; parental reminiscing; linguistic analyses; confirmatory factor analysis

Kaynakça

1. Alea, N., & Bluck, S. (2003). Why are you telling me that? A conceptual model of the social function of autobiographical memory. Memory, 11(2), 165-178.
2. Arbuckle, J. L. (2014). Amos (Version 23.0) [Computer Program]. Chicago: IBM SPSS.
3. Artioli, F., Cicogna, P. C., Occhionero, M., & Reese, E. (2012). “The people I grew up with”: The role of sociodemographic factors in early memories in an Italian sample. Memory, 20(2), 189-197.
4. Bentler, P. M. (1990). Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 238-246.
5. Berntsen, D., & Rubin, D. C. (2004). Cultural life scripts structure recall from autobiographical
6. memory. Memory & cognition, 32(3), 427-442.
7. Bollen, K. A. (1989). Structural equations with latent variables. New York: Wiley.
8. Brown, T. A. (2015). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research. Guilford Publications.

9. Demiray, B., Gülgöz, S., & Bluck, S. (2009). Examining the life story account of the reminiscence bump: Why we remember more from young adulthood. Memory, 17(7), 708-723.
10. Fivush, R. (2011). The development of autobiographical memory. Annual review of Psychology, 62, 559-582.
11. Fivush, R., & Vasudeva, A. (2002). Remembering to relate: Socioemotional correlates of
12. mother-child reminiscing. Journal of Cognition and Development, 3, 73–90.
13. Fivush, R., Haden, C. A., & Reese, E. (2006). Elaborating on elaborations: Role of maternal
14. reminiscing style in cognitive and socioemotional development. Child Development, 77, 1568–1588.
15. Fivush, R., Marin, K., McWilliams, K., & Bohanek, J. G. (2009). Family reminiscing style: Parent gender and emotional focus in relation to child well-being. Journal of Cognition and Development, 10(3), 210-235.
16. Hedrick, A. M., Haden, C. A., & Ornstein, P. A. (2009). Elaborative talk during and after an event: Conversational style influences children's memory reports. Journal of Cognition and Development, 10(3), 188-209.
17. Jack, F., MacDonald, S., Reese, E., & Hayne, H. (2009). Maternal reminiscing style during early childhood predicts the age of adolescents’ earliest memories. Child Development, 80,496–505.
18. Kingo, O. S., Berntsen, D., & Krøjgaard, P. (2013). Adults’ earliest memories as a function of age, gender, and education in a large stratified sample. Psychology and Aging, 28(3), 646.
19. Kline, R. B. (2005). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. (2nd Edition ed.). New York: The Guilford Press.
20. Kuebli, J., & Fivush, R. (1992). Gender differences in parent-child conversations about past emotions. Sex Roles, 27, 683–698.
21. Laible, D. (2011). Does it matter if preschool children and mothers discuss positive vs. negative events during reminiscing? Links with mother‐reported attachment, family emotional climate, and socioemotional development. Social Development, 20(2), 394-411.
22. Nelson, K., & Fivush, R. (2004). The emergence of autobiographical memory: A social cultural developmental theory. Psychological Review, 111, 486–511.
23. Oppenheim, D., & Koren-Karie, N. (2014). Parental insightfulness and child-parent emotion dialogues: Their importance for children's development. The Herzliya Series on Personality and Social Psychology. Mechanisms of Social Connection: From Brain to Group, 205-220.
24. Peterson, C., Smorti, A., & Tani, F. (2008). Parental influences on earliest memories. Memory, 16(6), 569-578.
25. Peterson, C., & Nguyen, D. T. (2010). Parent–child relationship quality and infantile amnesia in adults. British Journal of Psychology, 101(4), 719-737.
26. Reese, E, & Brown, N. (2000). Reminiscing and recounting in the preschool years. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14(1), 1–17.
27. Sales, J. M., Fivush, R., & Peterson, C. (2003). Parental reminiscing about positive and negative events. Journal of Cognition and Development, 4, 185–209.
28. Steiger, J. H. (1990). Structural model evaluation and modification. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 25, 214-12.
29. Tucker, L. R., & Lewis, C. (1973). A reliability coefficient for maximum likelihood factor analysis. Psychometrika, 38, 1–10.
30. Van de Schoot, R., Lugtig, P., & Hox, J. (2012). A checklist for testing measurement invariance. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9(4), 486-492.
31. Wang, Q. (2006). Relations of maternal style and child self-concept to autobiographical memories in Chinese, Chinese immigrant, and European American 3-year-olds. Child Development, 77, 1794–1809.
32. Wang, Q., & Conway, M. A. (2006). Autobiographical memory, self, and culture. Memory and society: Psychological perspectives, 9-27