Memory Talk Research Articles

Current Effect of Mother-Child Memory Talk on Emotion Regulation, Self-Esteem, and Memory

Children talking to their parents more frequently about past experiences tend to have higher emotion regulation skills and self-esteem in their future lives, which may lead to higher volume and richer emotional content in future memories. Previous research also indicated that self-esteem has a strong bond with emotion regulation skills. This study’s aim is to measure the mediator roles of emotion regulation difficulty and self-esteem on the relationship between childhood maternal reminiscing frequency and the volume and emotional content of the current memory experienced with the mother. Additionally, mediator roles of self-esteem in the connection between past maternal reminiscing and emotion regulation difficulty, and emotion regulation difficulty in the relationship between self-esteem and the current memory variables (i.e., total words, total emotion and unique emotion words) are examined. Participants (N=124, the age range was 22-39) filled out Rosenberg Self-Esteem, Emotion Regulation Difficulty, and Family Reminiscence Scales and wrote down one negatively-charged recent memory about their mothers. Path analysis revealed significant positive associations between past maternal reminiscing and self-esteem, emotion regulation difficulty, and total and unique emotion words in recent memory, and negative association between self-esteem and emotion regulation difficulty, supporting half of the mediation hypotheses. Results supported the notion that the frequency of parent-child reminiscing conversations in childhood is a parameter of child development since it can show its prospective effect via improving self-esteem and emotional functioning. Gender differences were not evident for current memory variables but more research on this issue is needed to reach more precise conclusions.

‘Memory Talk’ in a Museum in a Contested Land

The article reflects on a participatory research initiative involving place attachment and heritage discourses, carried out in 2012–2014 in the multicultural and ethnically contested city of Koper/Capodistria (Slovenia). The initiative engaged local inhabitants in a set of ‘memory evenings’ dedicated to exploring personal and collective memories and place attachment to sites in the city’s old town. Although it was meant to promote participatory approaches in the conservation of built heritage and stimulate inclusive heritage discourses, it also had a strong psychological effect for local inhabitants. Initially conceived as a combination of the group interview and focus group methods, it evolved into an approach comparable to the discourse of ‘memory talk’ (Degnen 2005). The article analyses the past experience, focusing particularly on its criticalities, and points to how it is currently being developed.

Effects of Maternal Discourse Style and Content During Memory Talk on Preschoolers’ Prosocial Behavior: Mediating Effects of Preschoolers’ Moral Judgement

Effects of Maternal Discourse Style and Content During Memory Talk on Preschoolers’ Prosocial Behavior: Mediating Effects of Preschoolers’ Moral Judgement

Preschoolers’ secure base script representations in relations to social competence, maternal narrative style and content in a Korean sample

ABSTRACTA central notion of attachment theory is that the security experienced in the context of interactions with caregiver(s) is reflected in the individual’s close interpersonal relationships and psychological adaptation throughout life. In this study, seventy-nine Korean preschoolers’ secure base script representations were assessed to examine their relations with social competence, and maternal narrative style and content. Secure base script (SBS) was assessed using three stories from the Attachment Story Completion Task. Preschoo-lers’ social competence was measured using maternal reports. Maternal narrative style and content were assessed using memory talk procedure. Results indicated that preschoolers with higher SBS scores were rated by their mothers as being more socially competent. Further, child SBS scores were significantly associated with maternal narrative style and content. Findings suggest that SBS representations are found among Korean preschoolers and SBS representations show a continuing connection to social competence and maternal narrative style and content.

‘Some I don’t remember and some I do’: Memory talk in accounts of intimate partner violence

This study is the first to address the ways in which male perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV) talk about memory in their reports of their IPV and how these are used to manage their accountability for the violence. Drawing on and developing the discursive psychological literature on talk about memory, which highlights how such talk is used to perform practical actions within interactions, a discourse analysis is conducted on interviews with six male perpetrators of recent, multiple incidents of IPV who were undergoing treatment. The analysis identified the varying ways in which memory was used: first, claims of forgetting were used to avoid answering difficult and potentially incriminating questions; second, claims of clear memories were used to position partners as problematic and responsible for violence; and third, claims about simultaneously remembering and forgetting were found. The implications of these strategies for managing identity and accountability are discussed.

Stuart Hall's pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will: reflections on an intellectual life

ABSTRACTStuart Hall was a seminal figure in the development of cultural studies and his death in 2014 has left an intellectual and political void. This article, based on a memorial talk, offers a number of perspectives on Hall’s life and work: the relationship between his speeches/interviews and his written work; the cultural and political context of cultural studies’ emergence; the contradictory and productive relationship between cultural studies and Marxism; the centrality of ‘conjunctural analysis’ to the project of cultural studies; the continuing relevance of the recently republished book Policing the Crisis; the responsibilities of intellectuals to make ideas matter in the world beyond the academy, and the political nature of Hall’s version of cultural studies.

David Knill and the rational analysis of mid-level vision (A memorial talk in honor of the memory of David Knill)

David Knill and the rational analysis of mid-level vision (A memorial talk in honor of the memory of David Knill)

Mother–child memory conversations and self-construal in Eastern Turkey, Western Turkey and the USA

Eighty-seven mothers and their four-year-old children from Eastern Turkey (N = 32 pairs), Western Turkey (N = 30 pairs) and the USA (N = 25 pairs) participated in a study of mother–child memory talk as a reflection of mothers' self construal, in view of differences in the function of memory talk across cultures. Mother–child pairs were audio-recorded while talking about shared past and anticipated future events. Mothers completed the Balanced Integration–Differentiation questionnaire measure of self-construal and were scored as high or low on individuation and relatedness orientations. Mothers' memory and future talk showed similar patterns of cultural differences: American mothers provided the most voluminous, descriptive and elaborative talk, while Eastern Turkish mothers showed the highest level of repetitiveness, and Western Turkish mothers' talk fell in between. Children's memory talk was similar across cultures. In all cultures, mothers who scored high on both individuation and relatedness (balanced self-construal subtype) engaged in more voluminous and contexted memory talk, and individuation was associated with more elaborative talk about future events. Results are discussed in light of literature on cultural differences in self-construal and memory function.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Once Upon a Time: Explaining Cultural Differences in Episodic Specificity

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Once Upon a Time: Explaining Cultural Differences in Episodic Specificity

Erzählen als Prozess der (Wieder-) Herstellung von Selbstkohärenz. Überlegungen zur Verarbeitung traumatischer Erfahrungen

Traumatic memories are characterized by not being accessible to intentional recall nor being integrated into the matrix of autobiographical memory. Based on this description, the authors discuss the process of narration as a central means of regaining a sense of self-coherence after traumatic experiences. Formally correct narratives are characterized by three functions: orientation, reference and evaluation. Through so-called "memory talk" with socio-culturally competent partners, children learn how to reconstruct memories and to represent experience by narration. It is therefore suggested that narratives are the basic ingredient of autobiographical memory. The process of re-establishing a sense of coherence after trauma relies on the capacity for coherent narration. The latter is often not possible with traumatic experiences. We conducted a literature search in multiple databases for linguistic analyses of trauma narratives empirically correlating narrative style and posttraumatic psychopathology. It is recommended that research in psychopathology and psychotherapy should take issues of language into account more systematically.

George Wald memorial talk.

George Wald was born in 1906 in New York City to immigrant parents. An early and voracious reader, he soon developed a wide range of interests and entered New York University as a pre-law student, the first in his family to attend college. Shortly shifting to pre-medicine, he graduated college in biology. For graduate work, he joined the laboratory of Selig Hecht, a pioneer in vision research, at Columbia University. In 1932, four months before Hitler came to power, George went to Berlin to do postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Otto Warburg and there found vitamin A in the retina. This launched his life-long explorations of the molecular basis of vision for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967. During the 1960s, George became increasingly involved in anti-war and anti-nuclear activities, writing and travelling widely, including multiple trips to commemorations of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sponsored by Japanese colleagues. He considered these activities part of being a biologist, someone concerned with life. In his final years, he turned to questions about consciousness, writing and speaking about 'Life and Mind in the Universe'.

Maternal secure base scripts, children's attachment security, and mother – child narrative styles

This paper reports the results of a study examining links between maternal representations of attachment, child attachment security, and mother and child narrative styles assessed in the context of reminiscences about shared experiences. Participants were 90 mother – child dyads. Child attachment security was assessed using the attachment Q-set and maternal attachment representations were measured using a recently designed instrument that assesses the script-like qualities of those representations. Analyses examined dependencies in the mother – child memory talk data and then assessed the overlap between both mother and child reminiscing styles and the attachment variables. Narrative styles of both the mothers and their children were coherent and consistent for each dyad member. Furthermore, maternal narrative style (e.g., specific and elaborative questions, using confirming evaluation comments) was significantly related to child participation in the narrative. Maternal and child attachment variables were positively and significantly correlated, and child security was positively associated with maternal narrative style. Maternal secure base scripts were also found to be significantly related to the number of references to emotions in both mother and child narratives as well as to children's overall participation in the memory talk. The pattern of results suggests that attachment representations serve as one influence on the manner(s) in which mother – child dyads think about and discuss emotion-laden content relevant to the child's personal autobiography. Furthermore, the results are consistent with the notion that the manner in which children organize their thoughts about emotion are (at least potentially) shaped by the narrative styles of their parents.

Researches on health and welfare promotion based on an approach of social medicine

This article was derived from my memorial talk given when receiving the prize of the Japanese Society for Hygiene at their academic congress. The reader could review my research on health and welfare promotion made by introducing new conceptual health policy based on the approach of social medicine. Through my experience in different research work, the importance of social factors in the etiology of health during childhood, adulthood and old age was discussed. In addition, it was revealed that social factors not only influence the population's health status but also constitute the context within which organized efforts can be made to promote health. For the elderly, the annual health check, stroke patient registration, and insurance for care and spousal bereavement; for adults, the Karoshi and occupational health; and for children, air pollution-atopy predisposition and lifestyles were highlighted as social medicine-related issues. The research on mostly longitudinal population studies showed that health status, including the life expectancy and the prevalence of disability and chronic disorders, are related to one's marital status, social support, psychosocial working conditions and environmental factors as well as to lifestyles such as physical activity and hours of work and sleep at entry. More attention should be directed to independent factors' effects on health, separate from those of adverse health habits and bio-medical situations, under the health and welfare promotion strategy.

The emergence of autobiographical memory: a social cultural developmental theory.

The authors present a multicomponent dynamic developmental theory of human autobiographical memory that emerges gradually across the preschool years. The components that contribute to the process of emergence include basic memory abilities, language and narrative, adult memory talk, temporal understanding, and understanding of self and others. The authors review the empirical developmental evidence within each of these components to show how each contributes to the timing, quantity, and quality of personal memories from the early years of life. The authors then consider the relevance of the theory to explanations of childhood amnesia and how the theory accounts for and predicts the complex findings on adults' earliest memories, including individual, gender, and cultural differences.

Attachment and Emotion in Autobiographical Memory Development

The relation of attachment status to autobiographical memory was assessed in 3.5- to 4.5-year-olds. Of specific interest was the relation between attachment status and the emotional content of parent–child memory conversations. Forty-six mother–child dyads discussed four events designed to elicit positive and negative emotional themes. Both attachment status and gender moderated the emotional content of this memory talk. Mother–daughter dyads with insecurely attached girls engaged in relatively more negative memory talk than mother–daughter dyads with securely attached girls. However, the dyads of secure girls elaborated more often on both positive and negative emotional themes than did the dyads of insecure girls who primarily elaborated on positive themes. The relations between attachment status and emotion talk for mother–son dyads were inconsistent. Findings were discussed in terms of the role of attachment in the social construction of autobiographical memories.

Solar events and their influence on the interplanetary medium

The Workshop on Solar Events and Their Influence on the Interplanetary Medium very successfully met its goal “to foster interactions among colleagues, leading to an improved understanding of the unified relationship between solar events and interplanetary disturbances.” Organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Environment Laboratory and funded by the national Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solar Maximum Mission Principal Investigators and the Space Environment Laboratory, this meeting was held held September 8—11, 1986, in Estes Park, Colo. A total of 94 scientists, including representatives from Argentina, Germany, Japan, France, Scotland, England, Australia, Poland, Israel, Greece, China and the United States attended. A novel meeting schedule was adopted, with no formal presentations other than a keynote address by Rainer Schwenn of the Max Planck Institut fur Aeronomie (Federal republic of Germany), entitled “Transients on the Sun and Their Effects on the Interplanetary Medium: An Interdisciplinary Challenge”; a Gordon A. Newkirk Memorial talk on “Early History of the Coronagraph” by John Eddy of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Office of Interdisciplinary Earth Studies (Boulder, Colo.); and introductory and summary statements by working group leaders. Instead, there were three working groups, which met either independently or with one of the other groups according to a prearranged plan. Suggested roundtable discussion topics were distributed in advance to the members of each group, but primarily, each group was expected to think of questions for the other groups and respond to requests for information from them. As may be expected, for some topics there was group consensus. Other topics were contentious.

A longitudinal study of memory talk

A longitudinal study of memory talk

David Rosenberg (1941–1984): A Memorial Talk

Journal Article David Rosenberg (1941–1984): A Memorial Talk Get access Anthony Barnett Anthony Barnett Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar History Workshop Journal, Volume 20, Issue 1, Autumn 1985, Pages 216–220, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/20.1.216 Published: 01 October 1985

Memory development and “memory talk”

Memory development and “memory talk”