To view our recent projects scroll down
to browse:
The phenomenology of
younger and older adults' positive memories provide
insight
into how they recreate and narrate the stories of their lives.
How emotional and how
well structured our memories are may
influence the extent to which we are able to
find
listeners for the stories we tell.
The characteristics of positive autobiographical
memory
narratives were examined in younger and
older adults. Narratives were
content-coded for
the extent to which they contained
indicators of affect, sensory
imagery, and cognition. Affect was
additionally assessed through self-report. Young
adults
expressed more positive affect and
less sensory imagery in their memory
narratives than did older adults.
Age differences in cognitive
characteristics also
appeared: younger adults showed greater
causation-insight, and greater tentativeness
in retelling
their autobiographical memories. Controlling for episodic memory
ability
eliminated age differences in positive affect but did not
affect age differences on other
memory characteristics. Results are
discussed in terms of the role
that positive
autobiographical memories play in daily
emotional life across adulthood.
Related Readings:
Bluck, S., & Alea, N.
(2009). Characteristics of positive autobiographical memories in adulthood.
The International Journal of Aging & Human Development, 69(4),
247-265.
Development of the
Story Quality Index
Nearly all humans tell stories,
but whether a person recalls a good story can have
outcomes for both the storyteller and
listener. Previous research on story quality has
not
employed a standard tool for measuring quality, and
has not reported whether
men and women raters
of different ages judge story quality
similarly. The current
study addresses whether dimensions
of story quality represent a unitary index that is
consistent
across men and women of
different ages. The first specific aim
is to
determine whether lay-raters of different
ages and genders use a newly developed
rating
tool reliably (i.e., consistently) to evaluate
story quality. The second specific
aim
is to assess whether the identified dimensions form a general factor of
global story
quality such that the ratings can be combined into a story
quality index. Dimensions of
story quality were
drawn from the existing literature as
well as through use of a
structured focus group (age & gender
balanced). The materials were autobiographical
and fictional
stories provided by 129 older and younger
men and women about a
date with a
partner. Findings
showed that young and old men and women lay-raters
did indeed judge the quality of the memory
stories consistently.
Results also showed
that multidimensional
story ratings hang together to form an
index of story quality
that holds for both
types of stories, and is maintained in groups
of men and women,
and older and
younger adults. The Story Quality Index
is a useful new tool for the
standard assessment
of story quality across different types of stories and
individuals.
Memories as Directives
The study examines the relation of
experience with death to death attitudes and to
how
autobiographical memories are used by comparing people who had just signed up
to work with Hospice ( Novice ) with
people who already had several years of
experience as Hospice volunteers ( Experienced ). Participants (N = 52) completed
standard death attitude measures
and wrote narratives about
a death-related
autobiographical memory and
(for comparison) a memory of a low point in their life.
Self-ratings of the memory narratives were used to assess their
functional use. Results
show that higher levels of
experience with death were related to lower levels of death
anxiety and avoidance. Participants with higher levels of
death experience also more
frequently used their
death-related memories to serve adaptive functions. For example,
experienced volunteers reported using their
death-related memories to serve social
purposes: they reported sharing their death experiences to
get to know other people
better, to develop greater
intimacy in relationships, and to teach or advise
others.
Related
Readings:
Relations
to death attitudes and to the use of death-related materials. Death
Studies, 32,
524-549.
Remembering Being Me: The Self-Continuity
Function
What is the function of
remembering one's personal past? Literatures
converge to
identify three fundamental functions
of autobiographical memory: self, social, and
directive. This project focuses on the role of autobiographical
memory in maintaining
self-continuity. Self-continuity refers to the
knowledge and experiential sense of being
the same person
over time regardless of changes in
one's environment, in social
relationships,
and across ontological development.
People need to maintain self-
continuity:
memory for one's self in the past is an important
form of self-knowledge
(Neisser, 1988) that
is necessary for achieving current
goals (Conway, Singer, &
Tagini, 2004)
and is related to
well-being. Do individuals consciously
use
autobiographical memory to promote self-continuity? In this study,
using the Thinking
About Life Experiences
Questionnaire, younger and older adults
self-reported the
frequency with which they use autobiographical
memory to develop and maintain self-
continuity. Individuals
who reported low levels of self-concept clarity reported more
frequently recalling their personal past
to try to create self-continuity. Mediation
analyses show that it is younger adults, who have
lower levels of self-concept clarity,
who most frequently
draw on their personal past to create continuity. The
extent to
which individuals use autobiographical
memory in the service of self-continuity may
depend
on the psychosocial tasks faced in their specific life phase.
Related
Readings:
Bluck, S. & Alea, N.
(2008). Remembering being me:The self continuity function
of
autobiographical memory in younger and older adults. In F. Sani
(Ed.), Self continuity:
Individual and collective
perspectives (pp. 55-70). New York, NY: Psychology
Press.
A Life
Story Account of the Reminiscence Bump
The reminiscence bump is
one of the most robust findings in the
autobiographical
memory literature: adults recall a larger number
of events from the second and third
decade of life
than from other periods. Berntsen and Rubin (2002,
2004; Rubin &
Berntsen, 2003) proposed a life-script account of
the reminiscence bump that explains
why the bump is
found for positive but not for negative life
events. The current
projec extends the life-script account
by taking a life-span developmental approach,
proposing
a life-story account for the bump. This new account
argues that events in
the reminiscence bump are
characterized not only by positive valence but by
high
perceived control over the event, and high perceived
influence of the event on one's
later development.
Predictions from this
account were tested and confirmed in
analyses of 3541 life
events collected from 659
participants aged 50 to 90 years. Only high-control positive
events showed a
reminiscence bump, and these events were rated as more influential
on later development than events showing
any other combination of valence and
control.
Findings are discussed in terms of
an extension of the life-script account to
embrace both the principles
of lifespan development and the personal creation of a life
story by which
autobiographical memory is organized.
Related Readings:
Gluck, J. & Bluck, S. (2008). Looking back
across the life span: A life story account of
the reminiscence bump.
Memory & Cognition, 35, 1928-1939.
The Wisdom of
Experience
The project examines
the types of life situations to which wisdom
is applied, the
types of behaviors that
are engaged in that individuals
consider wise, and the
outcomes of events in with wisdom
as been used in everyday life. Adolescents, young
adults, and older adults
recalled a time from their own life when they "said, thought,
or
did something wise." Interviews were coded
for the type of events that elicit
wisdom, what was done that was
wise and the outcome. For all participants the
elicitor was usually a negative event but the outcome was positive.
The types of wise
behaviors remembered differed by age: adolescents
reported empathy and perspective-
taking, young
adults reported self-determination and
assertion, and older adults
reported having balance
and flexibility. It appears that personal conceptions
of one's
own wisdom differ with age and may have a developmental
trajectory.
In a second study, we examined how
wisdom-related events differ from stories that
people
tell of times when they were
foolish and times when they had
a 'peak
experience' in life. Comparison of these
autobiographical narratives show that wisdom
(but not
foolishness) occurs in response to major, significant life
events, particularly
those involving life decisions
and reactions to negative
events. Wisdom narratives
show unique thoughts, feelings and
behaviors (e.g. empathy) that occur neither in peak
experiences or foolish
narratives.
Related Readings:
Bluck, S. & Glueck, J. (2004). Making things
better and learning a lesson: experiencing
wisdom across the lifespan.
Journal of Personality, 72, 543-573.
Glueck, J., & Bluck, S., Baron, J., & McAdams, D.P.
(2005). The wisdom of
experience:
autobiographical reports across
adulthood. International Journal of Behavioral
Development, 29, 197-208.
Glück, J., & Bluck, S.
(2011). Laypeople's conceptions of wisdom and its development: Cognitive and
integrative views. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B: Psychological
Sciences and Social Sciences, 66B(3), 321-324.
Development of
Wisdom
There are many human virtues-
for example, honesty, intelligence, and bravery.Wisdom
is a
unique virtue revered across all cultures. What is wisdom and how
does one develop
it? This
study, in collaboration with Dr. Judith Gluck,
University of Vienna, Austria,
examines these
questions through use of a
survey appearing in the German-language
magazine GEO. The study
involves 2,276 participants ranging in age from 13 to 93 years
old who responded to
a questionnaire in the
magazine. To examine how people
conceptualize wisdom (i.e.
implicit theories of wisdom) rated various concepts, such as
empathy, intelligence, and self-reflection on a
5-point Likert-type scale, indicating the
extent to which
each is considered an essential aspect to wisdom. To
assess how people
believe that one becomes wise, that is, how
wisdom develops, participants also judged
the effectiveness of possible
methods of becoming wise using similar scales. Items include
such
"roads to wisdom" as studying philosophy, having
faced uncertainty and learning
from wise
people.The final question asked participants to evaluate their own
perceived
level of wisdom. The data are currently being analyzed to examine
what people believe
wisdom is and, perhaps more
importantly, how one can gain this
revered virtue.
Differences in conception of wisdom and
how it develops will be examine across age and
gender groups, and in relation to self-rated
wisdom.
Emotion in Memory: Narratives vs.
Self-reports
Though autobiographical remembering is a common
means of emotional expression
in everyday life, rarely
have autobiographical narratives been used to assess emotion.
In the present study, young and older adults' self-reports and narratives of
the salience,
frequency and intensity of emotional reactions to a
"real-world" emotional event were
compared. Self-reports
and autobiographical narratives tell different
stories about
certain aspects of
emotion. For example, self-report measures and
narratives both
indicate greater salience of
emotion late in life. In contrast,
older adults more
frequently expressed negative
affect, particularly sadness, in their narratives, but not in
self-reports.
Related Readings:
Alea, N., Bluck, S., & Semegon, A.
(2004). Young and older adult's expression
of
emotional experience: Do autobiographical narratives tell a different
story? Adult
Development, 11, 235-250.
Alea, N., Diehl, M., & Bluck, S.
(2004). Personality and emotion in late life.
Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology, (pp. 1-10). San Diego, CA:
Elsevier.
Levine, L.J., & Bluck, S. (2004). Painting with broad strokes: happiness and the
malleability of event
memory. Cognition and Emotion, 18, 559-574.
Using Autobiographical Memory for Intimacy
Maintaining intimate relationships is important for well being
across adulthood. How
is intimacy
fostered over a lifetime?
One theoretical claim is that
we use
autobiographical memories of others to keep
them close. Person characteristics (age
and gender) and memory
characteristics (e.g., vividness) were examined as predictors
of
increases in intimacy after
autobiographical remembering. Sixty-five young and
older men and women in long-term relationships remembered and shared
two events
about their partner. Intimacy (both
closeness and warmth) was assessed before and
after
remembering. Participants made several ratings of the memories'
characteristics,
representing three indices:
emotional re-experiencing, vividness and
rehearsal. A
series of hierarchal regression analyses indicate that
person and memory characteristics
matter. Older adults and y
ounger adults both benefit from the
intimacy function of
autobiographical remembering.
Women, however, show greater benefits than men.
Characteristics of the memories seem to matter more than age and
gender. Memories
that have been often
rehearsed lead to greater feelings of
closeness, regardless of
whether the person
remembering is young or old, male or female.
Similarly, vivid
memories are more predictive (than personal
characteristics) of individual's reports of
the level
of warmth in their relationship after
remembering. It appears that the
intimacy function of autobiographical memory is served across
adulthood, as long as
memory quality is
preserved.
Related Readings:
Alea, N., & Bluck, S. (2003). Why are you telling me that? A conceptual model of the
social function of autobiographical memory. Memory, 11,
165-178
The Empathy Function of
Autobiographical Memory
Previous
research has suggested there
are three distinct categorical functions
of
autobiographical memory (AM): social bonding
(communicative), directive (preparation
for current
and future behaviors) and
self-continuity. (Bluck & Alea, 2002). One
theorized social function of AM is eliciting empathy. The
current study investigates the
role of AM sharing in increasing
empathy towards individuals perceived as in chronic pain.
Participants
empathy levels were assessed after reading a journal
entry narrative written
by a person of varying age (25 or 85) in
chronic pain (pre-test) and again after assignment
to one
of two conditions (post-test). Conditions were set as either sharing
one's own AM
of having been in pain, or as a
comparison, thinking aloud about the author by recalling
the pain narrative. Personality, memory characteristics, and
memory functions were also
assessed. Findings
indicate that empathy levels (i.e., Perspective-taking)
increased after
sharing an autobiographical memory but not
in the comparison condition. Participants did
not show
age biases but reported equal empathy for the young and old narrator.Regression
analyses identified frequency of functional use of memory and the
personal significance of
the shared memory as
predictors of post-test empathy. Findings
are discussed in the
context of the functional
uses of autobiographical memory and in relation to formal
and
informal care-giving for younger and older adults in chronic
pain.
Self-Reported Functions of
Autobiographical Memory
Autobiographical memory serves three broad
functions: self, social, and as a directive for
behavior.
The Talking About Life Experiences
(TALE) questionnaire was developed to
assess the frequency of
reflecting on the past to serve these three functions. American and
German young adults completed the questionnaire. Results indicate that young
adults self-
report using autobiographical memory to
serve the three hypothesized functions (self,
social,
directive). We are currently examining whether an older adult sample will report
a
similar pattern of results.
Related readings:
Bluck, S.,
Alea, N., Habermas, T., & Rubin, D.R. (2005). A TALE of
three functions:
the self-reported uses of autobiographical memory. Social
Cognition.
Bluck, S. (2003). Autobiographical memory:
exploring its functions in everyday life.
Memory, 11, 113-123.
Bluck, S., & Alea, N.
(2002). Exploring the functions of autobiographical memory: why
do I remember the autumn? In J.D. Webster and B.K. Haight (Eds). Critical
Advances in
Reminiscence: From Theory to Application (pp. 61-75). New York,
NY: Springer Publishing
Company.