PSIWORLD Violeta Stefania Rotarescu* University of Bucharest, M. Kogalniceanu Bvd, Bucharest, Romania

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1 Available online at ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Scien ce s 127 ( 2014 ) PSIWORLD 2013 The differences in the content of autobiographical memory due to family factors in adolescents Abstract Violeta Stefania Rotarescu* University of Bucharest, M. Kogalniceanu Bvd, Bucharest, Romania This paper aims to present the differences between subjects concerning the cognitive and the emotional content of autobiographical memories, in two samples of high school students coming from deconstructed and normal families. The objective was to prove the existence of statistically significant differences between the two types of contents in autobiographical memories: cognitive and emotional. Two instruments were used: 15 cued-word stimuli list and Biographical Interview. The instruments were elaborated for the purposes of the present research. Results show a relatively moderate but significant association between social-familial factors and the cognitive and emotional content of the autobiographical memories, meaning that the autobiographical memory is a reconstruction containing elements of the past and of the present The Violeta Authors. Stefania Published Rotarescu. by Elsevier Published Ltd. by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of PSI Romanian WORLD Society 2013 of and Applied their Guest Experimental Editors: Dr Psychology. Mihaela Chraif, Dr Cristian Vasile and Dr Mihai Anitei. Keywords: autobiographical memory, emotional content, cognitive content, family environment, adolescence 1. Autobiographical memory general considerations The study of autobiographical memory is primarily linked of its modeling. For the researchers, content is of great interest (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Rubin, & Wenzel, 1996; Rubin, 1982; Schank, 1982), also its relationship to personality and social and cultural factors, as well (Rot rescu, 2013; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Berntsen, & Rubin, 2004; Haque & Hasking, 2010; de la Mata et al., 2011; Santamaria, et al., 2012). * Violeta Stefania Rotarescu. Tel.: ; fax: address: violeta.rotarescu@fpse.unibuc.ro Violeta Stefania Rotarescu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Romanian Society of Applied Experimental Psychology. doi: /j.sbspro

2 Violeta Stefania Rotarescu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 127 ( 2014 ) Modeling autobiographical memory a complex model The model presented in this study is based on Conway and Pleydell-Pearce model (2000). Based on the data regarding the content and organization of autobiographical memories, the authors propose a structural model of autobiographical memory, with a hierarchical organization, which helps to explain the characteristics of memories, ie: mixture of information between episodic and semantic memory, difficulty to access specific memories via general knowledge, memory distortion phenomena, and the ways in which memories binds itself as the core of personality (Conway & Pleydell-Pierce, 2000). The basic principle of this model is the dynamic reconstruction of memory. The memory is reconstructed from three types of representations, embedded one in another (Conway and Bekerian, 1987): periods of life, general events and specific details. Using this model, we tried to identify the way autobiographical memory reflects the influence of the external factors at the level of remembering - the social, cultural, personality frameworks. Under this assumption, autobiographical memory consists of a representation on the restored event, but within a framework that takes account of the present (Rot rescu, 2013; Rot rescu, Macovei & Stanciu, 2013). The model proposed by us assume, therefore, the involvement of external factors in its content, which gives variability and dynamism for the memories, on the one hand, but also creates a certain inconsistency in time, on the other hand (Bohanek & Fivush, 2010). Evaluation of the content of autobiographical memories becomes the way in which we identify the intervention of these factors, if it exists. From this point of view, the verification of the proposed model is a complex methodological approach that seeks quantitative aspects (number of words, type) and qualitative (cognitive and emotional value) of autobiographical memory and also the relations between content and its external factors Autobiographical memory and adolescent age Relatively few studies reflects the dynamics of autobiographical memory as a function of specific traits of an age (Conway & Bekerian, 1987; Bauer & Fivush, 2010; Bohanek & Fivusk, 2010). Such a study is mainly focused on the developmental factors that affects the construction of the autobiographical memory. In the adolescent age, many intellectual (Reese et al., 2010), personality and social networking (Santamaria et al., 2012) changes occurs, which will influence how reflection of autobiographical memory content is made. Autobiographical memory contents reflect the dynamism of intellectual development, which reached a level close to the maximum (Rubin, 1982), stabilization of personality traits (Reese et al., 2010) and create new social contacts (Habermas et al., 2010). As a higher cognitive mechanism, memory has a specific development pace during adolescence (Reese et al., 2010). It is the result of brain maturation mechanisms and of the progress made in previous stages. Among the defining features are: higher storage capacity and active character of memory (Bauer & Fivush, 2010). Other processes support the encoding process, so that the adolescent can operate with the essentials. In this respect, Vîgotski (apud Munteanu, 1998) showed that "in order to remember, adolescents need to think." chiopu and Verza (1997) believe that language includes fragments of biography and experience, terms and conflicts, critical emotions, attitudes, and less conscious levels. Language development is obvious and becomes more and more a tool, a way of self expression and of increased social capacity of networking Family as a relevant factor for the autobiographical memory Studies referring to the role of family context for the content of autobiographical memory regard the whole life span (Bauer & Fivush, 2010; Weede Alexander et al., 2010; Habermas et al., 2010). A special emphasis regards the teen period, concerning the idea of sociogenesis of cognitive abilities, including the autobiographical one. A longitudinal study developed by Reese, Haden and Fivush (1993) demonstrated that children who were supported by their mothers in remembering personal experiences, were better able to narrate past experiences than children of less elaborative mothers, later on. Other researches support the idea of the influencing role of the environmental factors, such as family, in the content of autobiographical memories (Larkina & Bauer, 2010; Reese, et al., 2010)

3 704 Violeta Stefania Rotarescu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 127 ( 2014 ) Measuring autobiographical memory Interest in autobiographical memory has led some psychologists (Rubin, 1982) to hold an inventory of methods. The autobiographical methods are divided into: cued-word lists, personal semantic memory tests, questionnaires, autobiographical and verbal fluency tests. As a research method in autobiographical memory research, cued-word lists were first used by Crovitz and Schiffman (1974), as adaptation of Galton's method. Essentially, the method consists in the successive presentation of words that are commonly used and can be easily objectified by the subjects. They are required to evoke, orally or written, for each word in part, those personal memories that come to mind first, that can be dated. Over time, the cued-word lists have known different versions, and varied in the number of words used and their content. Among the most notable examples we could mention: 20 words (Crovitz and Schiffman, 1974), 12 words (Robinson, 1976), and 10 words (Zola-Morgan, 1983) Construction of the instruments For this research we developed a cued-words list with controlled emotional content items - negative ("death", "hunger"), neutral ("door", "foot") and positive ("family", "home"). All items were highly-frequent Romanian words (according to peer-evaluators). Developing the list involved several stages: lexical, inter-evaluation, and refining (see Rot rescu, Macon & Stanciu, 2014, for details). The resulting list is administered to the subjects, and autobiographical memories are analyzed by several peerevaluators, for their cognitive (informational) and emotional charge. Another tool used to collect information on the immediate social environment (family) was biographical interview. The biographical interview was of a structured type, consisting of 10 items, which were measuring both quantitative and qualitative aspects. The manner of application was personal and involved a classification algorithm of responses on a numerical scale from 1 to Research objectives The present study aimed at verifying the assumption that external social factors 'load the informational and emotional content of autobiographical memories. In order to achieve the objective, we formulated the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: A direct and significant association between the cognitive content of the autobiographical memory and social family environment exists. Hypothesis 2: A direct and significant association between the emotional content of the autobiographical memory and social family environment exists. We have used two groups of subjects (N = 60), of which N = 31 male and N = 29 female. Age of subjects ranged between 14 and 18 years at the time of the research. All subjects were high school students. Formation of the two samples of teenagers implied two necessary and sufficient criteria: type of family environment identified in the previous analysis, and the presence/absence of educational and social interaction problems in school, during the school year. Two relatively homogeneous groups resulted: group 1 - non-conflictual (N = 30, 14 male and 16 female subjects, mean age 16.7) and group 2 - conflictual (N = 30, 17 male and 13 female subjects, mean age 16.8). 3. Results, discussion and conclusions A factor analysis was performed, for the cognitive and the emotional content of autobiographical memories. Regarding the cognitive content, a number of five factors were identified: F1 (teacher, father, sufferance, death, home), F2 (night, food, doctor), F3 (poverty, cold, mistake), F4 (door, TV set) and F5 (hunger, bed). For each identified factor, multiple regression analysis is used, in order to determine the relationship between it and the social environment variables (family), collected through biographical interview method (the most

4 Violeta Stefania Rotarescu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 127 ( 2014 ) emotionally negative family event, quality of the emotional relationship with father, quality of the relationship with mother and brothers). In the case of F1, factor family environment, and especially the most negative emotional intensity of family events (p <0.003) had a significant contribution (p <0.0001) to the informational content of autobiographical memory. In the case of F2 factor, the quality of the emotional relationship with the mother (p <0.013) influences the contents of memories in this category. Factor F3 has a predominantly negative outline and emphasizes the role of an unfavorable family environment, represented by the quality of relations with father (p <0.05). Factor F4 is not loaded significantly on any type of social variable, and F5 factor is related to the quality of relationships with brothers (p <0.047). In conclusion, the social environment, shaped by perceived events, and the quality of the relationship with those closest, influence the cognitive content of negative memories, without major impact on the quality of the neutral information. Regarding the factor analysis of emotional content of the autobiographical memories, six factors were highlighted: F1 (hunger, mistake, bed), F2 (father, sufferance), F3 (door, TV set home), F4 (night, poverty, death), F5 (cold, food) and F6 (teacher, doctor). Factor F1 has a negative affective coloring. Affective quality of the relationship with the mother (p <0.05) reveals the role of the family environment in shaping the emotional content of negative memories. In the case of factor F2 (negative) the quality of the relationship with the father is significantly associated (p <0.004) with the emotional content of the memories of this kind. Factor F3 is significantly associated with emotional intensity of the most unfortunate family event (p <0.010) and factor F4 (negative) is significantly associated with the quality of the relationship with siblings (p <0.042). In the case of F5 factor, none of the family environment factors of subjective loads significant memories in this category. Factor F6 (neutral) is significantly associated with the quality of the relationship with mother (p <0.021), and brothers (p <0.047). In conclusion, a lower determination is found between the social dimension and the emotional content of the autobiographical memory. Emotional value is determined by environmental differences, depending on the emotional content of the autobiographical memory. The results indicate that both hypotheses are confirmed. Significant associations between social environmental factors, family and content of autobiographical memories were identified, especially with the emotionally negative ones. However, the size and strength of the association between family environment factors and autobiographical content for teens is lower, compared to data collected from younger subjects (age 6-9 and 10-14, Rot rescu, 2013, results under reporting). In fact, the trend of association between the two variables decreases with age, which confirms the idea of a teenager growing empowerment in relation to his/her family, reflected in the content of the evoked memories. Interestingly, autobiographical memories supports the same changes in content, independent of the "age" of the evoked event, which reinforces the idea of autobiographical memory seen as a reconstruction of the past based on the characteristics of the present. As a conclusion, the data obtained from this research support the autobiographical memory model proposed in the beginning. Further research should include the role of personality factors, as well as the cultural, intellectual, etc. in determining how individuals manage to evoke their past. References Berntsen, D., Rubin, D.C., Cultural Life Scripts Structure Recall From Autobiographical Memory, Memory & Cognition, 32, 3, 2004, p Bauer, P.J., Fivush, R., Context and consequences of autobiographical memory development, Cognitive Development, 25, 4, 2010, p Bohanek, J.G., Fivush, R., Personal narratives, well-being, and gender in adolescence, Cognitive Development, 25, 4, 2010, p Conway, M.A., A Structural Model Of Autobiographical Memory, În Conway, M.A., Rubin, D.C., Spinnler, H., Wagenaar, W.A. (Coord.), Theoretical Perspectives On Autobiographical Memory, Dodrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992, p Conway, M.A., Flashbulb Memories, Hillsdale N.J., Erlbaum, Conway, M.A., Bekerian D.A., Organization In Autobiographical Memory. Memory And Cognition, 15, 1987, p

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