Preliminary Study Of The Characteristics Of Children’s Earliest Memories

Autobiographical memory is the memory on individual’s life event. Developmental psychologists focus on the life span of autobiographical memory. Specifically, childhood amnesia is the main content of the study. It is the absence or scarcity of autobiographical recollections among adults for events that happened in their early life. The theory explaining this phenomenon is mainly concentrated in neurological, cognitive and social development. However, previous studies mostly investigated on western adults. In recent years, few cross-cultural studies and children studies discovered the earliest memory which is regarded as the mark of childhood amnesia vanishing, had large discrepancies based on different ages and groups. Meanwhile, memory emotion was limited to be measured by emotional valence and emotional intensity, thus restricting the discussion about the emotion mechanism of autobiographical memory.In this study, from the perspective of development, it investigated only-child’s childhood amnesia based on age and gender differences and the relationship between various characteristics of memory. Firstly, the research revised the memory fluency task and single earliest memory method using literature method and pre-interview. With respect of emotion, it added the measurement of moral emotion and mixed emotion. Then, the formal investigation used a revised interview approach, which investigated the characteristics of early memory and the earliest memory of60students from grade4in primary school and grade2in middle school.The research results were shown as follow:(1) In general, gender differences and age differences of most of the children’s earliest memory were not significant, oppositely, they showed some consistency. It was found that only the number of13-year-old children’s early memories was higher compared to9-year-old children’s, and more boys were other-person-driven talkers than girls.(2) Only-children in urban areas by age9already resemble adults.(3) Compared to young Chinese children in the western studies, the children in this study had older age of the earliest memories, more elaborate and more times of emotions mentioned.(4) Compared to the western subjects in the western studies, the collectivism culture characteristic of Chinese children tended to be remarkable. It showed the Chinese children’s earliest memories included more social interaction and more involved with important individuals.(5) Self-driven talking on the earliest memory and moral emotion, had significantly positive effect on the number of early memories, and age at earliest memory had significantly negative effect on the number of early memories.(6) Spontaneous mentions of emotions and specified mentions of emotions had significantly positive effect on memory volume.(7) The high emergence frequency of moral emotion and mixed emotion in the earliest memory indicates understanding emotion possibly plays a key role in the further losing of early memory in the middle period of childhood. The development of emotional ability shall be further studied as the mechanism of the occurrence and amnesia of autobiographical memory.