Child-reference Effect And Mother-reference Effect In Middle-aged And Elderly Chinese

Previous research suggested that self is a well-developed and often used structure(highly elaborative and organizational) which has benefit on the memory of materials related to self. An extensive array of experiments demonstrate the existence of self-reference effect(SRE) in memory which refers to that materials related to the self are better remembered than information that is encoded in the form of semantic and other-referent. A series of subsequent experiments using the classic paradigm of self-reference effect prove that information in connection with mother, close friends and lover produce equal memory advantage with self-reference which indicates that intimate others can be included in self-concept. Cross-cultural research about self-reference effect show that individuals are more inclined to incorporate important others in self-concept under collectivist culture background. Existing research usually choose college students as subjects and use mother, friends and lovers as intimate-other condition. However, middle-aged people is rarely considered as subjects and child-reference processing is also infrequent involved in SRE expriments. In addition, since the implementation of the one-child policy in 1979, fertility control and family planning became constitutional duties for couples and now the typical Chinese family is structured in a 4:2:1 fashion (four grandparents, two parents, and one child). Consequently, middle-aged adults are now referenced to as the "Sandwich Generation" who are faced with such a situation in China:they have a small under the old, that is they may have children as well as elderly parents to care for and with the addition that China attaches great importance to the filial piety make the study of child-reference effect and mother-reference of middle-aged more realistic. Moreover, it is worth noted that some research indicate mother-reference effect is found with college students as subjects whereas the phenomenon is not exist with elderly people, so how child-reference process in elderly is another aspect of the research. The aim of this study is to explore how children and mother reflect in self-concept among middle-aged and the elderly people.In the first experiment, the aim is to investigate the explicit closeness of the most intimate family member(children and mother) among middle-aged and the elderly people. We use the Inclusion of Other in the Self scale, and the results shows that the score involving children and mother is significantly higher than score concerning famous person and the score related to children is highter than mother which indicates that individuals think children and mother more intimate and important than famous people while children more important than mother; In the second experiment, the aim is to explore the child-reference and mother-reference effect in middle-aged people. We use simple factor experimental design and adopt recognition rate as the measurement index conducting four conditions(self-reference, child-reference, mother-reference and other-reference). The results demonstrate that adjectives encoded with reference to the sole child result in better recognition accuracy than words related to mother and produced equal memory advantage with self-reference, adjectves in connection with mother result in better memory advantage than words related to famous other; In the third experiment, the aim is to explore the child-reference and mother-reference effect in the elderly people. We adopt the same procedure with experiment 2, The results indicate that adjectives encoded with reference to one of the children result in better recognition accuracy than words related to mother and produced equal memory advantage with self-reference, there were no significant differences between adjectves in connection with mother and words related to famous other. The last two experiments prove that child-reference effect is more powerful than mother-reference effect, children is more important person than mother in the life of middle-aged and the elderly people and children are incorporated into self-structure of middle-aged and the elderly people.The research explore the closeness of children and mother and self-reference effect and mother-reference effect among middle-aged and the elderly people from the perspective of explicit and implicit consciousness. The results reveal that both children and mother are intimate person in life, but children seems more important than mother and children is included in self-concept but mother is not.