Preliminary Study Of The Effect Of Parent-Child Autobiography Narrative On Children’s Autobiographical Memory

The research on "parents-child autobiography narrative" was originated from the research on event memory, and is a branch of the research on the social function of autobiography narrative. The research field of "parents-child memory narrative" is closer to the nature of "living memory" of autobiography narrative, which has great significances on the research of the relations between a child’s early family interaction and the development of his/her character. The research approach is "parent-child narrative". Currently, empirical studies on this field are mainly concentrated on abroad, with the researching hot topics such as distinction between parents’ narrative styles, descriptions of the individual differences, relationship between a child’s linguistic development and the development of his/her social emotions, as well as the influence of the mother’s narrative on the child development. The subjects are mostly the ones with the Western cultural background. There is no empirical study with Chinese as the major subjects yet.This study aims at exploring feasible researching paths by the first practices among the Chinese subjects; meanwhile, testing the confirmed research findings from foreign countries among the Chinese subjects. The collection procedure of the recordings is determined by pre-interviews. And then 60 pairs of "parents-child" are selected to participate in the formal research, which includes three steps:Collection of the narratives’ recordings, autobiographic memory interviews and self-concept measurements. After transcribing, coding and analyzing the interviews’ recordings and the measured data, we found that:(1) Among the Chinese subjects, narratives about the events which bring negative emotions and positive emotions from mothers are significantly more detailed than those from fathers, and both parents’ narratives about the events which bring negative emotions are significantly more detailed than those of the events which bring positive emotions; this conclusion is the same as that of the western subjects. (2) There is no gender difference in children’s autobiographical memory measurement results, while there exists significant grade difference; within the Chinese subjects, there is the significant positive correlation between the exhaustive nature of mother’s narrative style and the sociality of children’s autobiographical memory.(3) On the communication quality of the events which bring negative emotions, the positive correlation between the concern degree of the mothers on the children’s emotion and the sociality of children’s autobiographical memory is presented; while, there is no any correlation between the mothers’ attention on the event elements in the course of conversation and the children’s self-concept development level, which is different from that of the western subjects.As one of the factors of affecting the development of socialization and personality, the effect of negative events should be further discussed.