Gender,experimenter gender and medium of report influence the content of autobiographical memory report

In this study, we examined the role of context in autobiographical memory narratives, specifically as it pertains to gender among emerging adults. Male and female participants reported stressful events in their lives in the presence of an experimenter, and were randomly assigned either to report events verbally or type them, and to report in the presence of a male or female experimenter. Narratives were coded for factual and interpretive content. Results revealed that men verbally reporting to women reported longer narratives than all other groups. Women's narrative length did not vary by medium of report or conversational partner, but women used proportionally fewer internal state phrases when verbally reporting to men than when reporting to women. Women also used proportionally fewer evaluative statements in verbal reports than in typed narratives. Of these important interactions among context, gender, and experimenter gender, some findings, such as men's longer narratives and women's reduced internal states, were counter to expectations. These findings highlight the importance of methodological influences in autobiographical memory studies, in regard to both the context generated by experimental methods, and how gender differences are understood.     

Meaning making in mothers’ and children's narratives of emotional events

Narrative coherence and the inclusion of mental state language are critical aspects of meaning making, especially about stressful events. Mothers and their 8- to 12-year-old children with asthma independently narrated a time they were scared, frustrated, and happy. Although mothers’ narratives were generally more coherent and more saturated with mental state language than children's narratives, for both mothers and children narratives of negative events were more coherent and contained more mental state language than narratives of positive events overall, and narratives of scary events contained more mental state language than narratives of frustrating events. Coherence appears to be multifaceted, in that the three dimensions of coherence coded, context, chronology, and theme were not strongly interrelated within narratives of the same event, but use of mental state language, including cognitive-processing and emotion words, appears to be more integrated. Moreover, while thematic coherence seems to be a consistent individual narrative style across valence of event being narrated, mental state language appears to be a consistent style only across the two stressful event narratives. Finally, and quite surprisingly, there were virtually no relations between mothers’ and children's narrative meaning making.     

Meaning making in mothers' and children's narratives of emotional events

Narrative coherence and the inclusion of mental state language are critical aspects of meaning making, especially about stressful events. Mothers and their 8- to 12-year-old children with asthma independently narrated a time they were scared, frustrated, and happy. Although mothers' narratives were generally more coherent and more saturated with mental state language than children's narratives, for both mothers and children narratives of negative events were more coherent and contained more mental state language than narratives of positive events overall, and narratives of scary events contained more mental state language than narratives of frustrating events. Coherence appears to be multifaceted, in that the three dimensions of coherence coded, context, chronology, and theme were not strongly interrelated within narratives of the same event, but use of mental state language, including cognitive-processing and emotion words, appears to be more integrated. Moreover, while thematic coherence seems to be a consistent individual narrative style across valence of event being narrated, mental state language appears to be a consistent style only across the two stressful event narratives. Finally, and quite surprisingly, there were virtually no relations between mothers' and children's narrative meaning making.     

Prevalence and effects of life event exposure among undergraduate and community college students

The purposes of this study were to assess lifetime and recent exposure to various life events among undergraduate and community college students and to assess the relation between event exposure and a broad range of outcomes (i.e., mental and physical health, life satisfaction, grade point average). Undergraduate students from a midwestern university (N = 842) and a community college (N = 242) completed online measures of lifetime event exposure and outcomes at Time 1 and recent event exposure at Time 2 two months later. Life events assessed included events that did and did not meet the definition of a traumatic event (i.e., posttraumatic stress disorder Criterion A1) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) as well as directly (e.g., own life-threatening illness) and indirectly (e.g., others' illness) experienced events. Students reported experiencing many lifetime and recent Criterion A1 and non-A1 events, and community college students reported more events than did university students. Generally, individuals who reported more lifetime events also reported poorer outcomes (e.g., poorer health). The number of non-Criterion A1 and directly experienced events tended to be more strongly correlated with negative outcomes than were the number of Criterion A1 and indirectly experienced events reported. These findings suggest that non-A1 events are important to assess and can be significantly related to outcomes for students.     

负性生活事件对大学生抑郁的影响：网络成瘾的中介与5-HTR1A基因rs749098多态性的调节作用

基于抑郁的基因-环境研究范式,以301名大学生为研究对象,探究负性生活事件对大学生抑郁的影响及作用机制。结果表明：(1)负性生活事件、网络成瘾与大学生抑郁两两显著相关;(2)网络成瘾在负性生活事件对大学生抑郁的影响中起部分中介作用;(3) 5-HTR1A基因rs749098多态性在该中介模型的直接路径和中介后半段起调节效应,具体表现为,相比携带C/G和G/G基因型个体,C/C基因型个体负性生活事件对抑郁的负向预测更强,且携带C/C基因型的个体,即使是低水平的网络成瘾的都表现出更高的抑郁情况,而在高水平的网络成瘾的情况下三种基因型都表现出高水平的抑郁。     

Is the truth in the details? Extended narratives help distinguishing false “memories” from false “reports”

The present study examined the effects of fantasy proneness on false "reports" and false "memories", of existent and non-existent footage of a public event. We predicted that highly fantasy prone individuals would be more likely to stand by their initial claim of having seen a film of the event than low fantasy prone participants when prompted for more details about their experiences. Eighty creative arts students and 80 other students were asked whether they had seen CCTV footage preceding the attack on Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh up to, and including, non-existent footage of the actual moment of the attack. If affirmative, they were probed for extended narratives of what they claimed to have seen. Overall, 64% of participants provided a false "report" by answering yes to the initial question. Of these, 30% provided no explicit details of the attack, and a further 15% retracted their initial answer in their narratives. This left 19% of the sample who appeared to have false "memories" because they provided explicit details of the actual moment of the attack. Women scored higher than men and art students scored higher than other students on fantasy proneness, but there was no effect on levels of false reporting or false "memory". Memories were rated more vivid and clear for existent compared to non-existent aspects of the event. In sum, these data suggest a more complex relationship between memory distortions and fantasy proneness than previously observed.     

Sex differences in domain-specific depressogenic cognitive responses to negative and positive life events

Maladaptive cognitive responses to stressful life events represent well-replicated risk factors for depression. Research indicates that stressful life events that are dependent on the individual to occur or are interpersonal may generate more maladaptive cognitive responses than those that are independent and/or non-interpersonal. The current study examined the roles of sex and life event domains in eliciting depressogenic cognitive responses. Participants were 212 (71% female) undergraduate students who completed seven weekly questionnaires on participant-identified most negative and most positive life events over the previous 7 days. Additionally, participants reported levels of brooding and cognitive style in response to the most negative event and levels of positive rumination and dampening in response to the most positive event. Data were analyzed using mixed ANOVAs. Results indicated that females engaged in greater brooding regardless of event dependency. In addition, dependent and interpersonal life events generated greater brooding while dependent and non-interpersonal negative events generated greater negative cognitive style. An interaction between sex and domain was observed for dampening positive life events, such that males did not differ between interpersonal and non-interpersonal life events while females were more likely to dampen following interpersonal life events than non-interpersonal events.     

Episodic memory and episodic foresight in 3- and 5-year-old children

In the present study, we examined the development of episodic memory and episodic foresight. Three- and 5-year-olds were interviewed individually using a personalised timeline that included photographs of them at different points in their life. After constructing the timeline with the experimenter, each child was asked to discuss a number of different events: an event that happened yesterday, an event that happened earlier today, an event that would happen later today, and an event that would happen tomorrow. As judged by their parents, children's accounts were highly accurate. After controlling for age and language scores, there was a strong relation between amount of information reported about past and future events. Overall, 5-year-olds reported more total information than 3-year-olds; however, reports by 3-year-olds included a similar proportion of first-person reference as did reports by 5-year-olds. No age difference appeared in proportion of future-oriented talk. We conclude that the present task provides a promising method of exploring the emergence of mental time travel during early childhood.     

Gendered themes in family reminiscing

Previous research conducted in laboratory settings has shown reliable gender differences in autobiographical memory. However, these studies have primarily focused on structural or emotional aspects of memory narratives told to an unfamiliar experimenter. The present study extends this literature by investigating gender differences in social references and interpersonal themes in parent-child narratives about the past. Participants were 17 white, middle-class children and their mothers and fathers, who were interviewed when children were 40 and 70 months of age. Parent-child narratives about shared activities in the past, as well as narratives about parents' own childhood, were examined. Results indicated that when discussing shared events, both parents talked in similar ways across children, although fathers referred to self more than mothers. However both parents referred to their girls more than their boys. Regarding event themes, parents discussed more social events with girls than with boys. Children themselves showed different gendered patterns; girls mentioned self and others, and relationships more than boys did, and children mentioned self and others more often when talking with fathers than with mothers. With respect to narratives about parents' childhood experiences, however, no gender differences were observed, save that parents referred to others more often in retrospective narratives told to girls than to boys. These findings suggest that gendered behaviours are best understood within the specific contexts and purposes of relational interactions.     

文化疏离感对汉区高校少数民族大学生幸福感的影响机制

为揭示文化疏离感与汉区高校少数民族大学生幸福感的关系,以及压力性生活事件的调节效应和基本心理需要的中介效应,采用文化疏离感量表、压力量表、基本心理需要量表和幸福感问卷对汉区高校少数民族大学生幸福感进行研究。结果显示:(1)文化疏离感会降低汉区高校少数民族大学生幸福感;(2)压力性生活事件对文化疏离感与汉区高校少数民族大学生幸福感的关系具有调节效应;(3)这一调节效应是以基本心理需要为中介变量。因此,文化疏离感对汉区高校少数民族大学生幸福感的影响是有中介的调节效应。     

Gendered Reminiscence Practices and Self-Definition in Late Adolescence

The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences in the emotional construction of life-threatening events (LTEs) that were chosen as self-defining by late adolescents. European American college students (41 women, 25 men) whose average age was 19 were selected from a larger sample (n = 139) because they reported at least 1 LTE among 3 self-defining memories. Memory narratives were elicited with a questionnaire (Singer & Moffitt, 1991–1992) and coded for emotional position. As expected, tough, action-packed positions were more prevalent in men's narratives, and compassionate positions were more prevalent in women's narratives. Unexpectedly, narratives that emphasized one's own vulnerability (fear or sadness) were equally prevalent for men and women, and women's emotional discourse was more conditional upon type of event, i.e., deaths vs. assaults. Findings provide the most explicit evidence to date that some gendered reminiscence practices found in prior studies of children are reflected in late adolescents' self-defining reminiscences. Implications are also discussed for a more situated understanding of gendered reminiscence pratices and for theories of identity development.     

The role of neuroticism in daily stress and coping

The authors examined the influence of neuroticism (N) on the occurrence of different types of daily events, primary and secondary appraisals of those events, use of specific coping strategies, and end-of-day negative mood. College students completed questionnaires at the end of every day for 14 consecutive days. When reporting their most stressful event of each day, high-N individuals, compared with low-N individuals, reported more interpersonal stressors and had more negative primary and secondary appraisals and reacted with more distress in response to increasingly negative primary and secondary appraisals. Compared with low-N individuals, high-N individuals used less-adaptive coping strategies (e.g., hostile reaction) and reacted with more distress in response to some types of coping strategies. The appraisal findings, in particular, help to explain the chronic negative affectivity associated with neuroticism.     

Links Between Stressful Life Events and Proactive and Reactive Functions of Aggression

Recently, more attention has been devoted to understanding how stressful life events might relate to proactive and reactive aggression. Findings suggest that stressful life events are more strongly linked to reactive, than proactive, aggression; however, it is unclear whether the impact of stressful life events on proactive and reactive aggression might vary as a function of the level of exposure to or type of stressful life event. The current study examined how level of exposure to stressful life events (i.e., witnessed, experienced, and learned about) and stressful life event types (i.e., war zone exposure, sexual victimization, interpersonal violence, and other trauma exposure) related to proactive and reactive aggression. The sample was comprised of 500 undergraduate students (M = 18.96, SD = 1.22, 49.6% male) recruited from a Midwestern university. Findings indicated that all three levels of stressful life event exposure (i.e., experienced, witnesses, and learned) were associated with reactive aggression; however, only witnessed stressful life events were associated with proactive aggression. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.     

Autobiographical memory in dysphoric and non‐dysphoric college students using a computerised version of the AMT

On autobiographical memory tests (AMTs) using positive and negative cue words, research has consistently found that depressed individuals (relative to nondepressed controls) are more likely to recall overgeneral memories (OGMs) and are less likely to recall specific memories. A total of 56 undergraduates who scored high or low on a measure of depression were shown positive and negative word cues and event cues in a computerised AMT. Dysphoric college students made significantly fewer specific and more categoric (overgeneral) responses than controls, but did not differ from controls in terms of extended responses. Results suggest that the difference in memory specificity between low and high dysphoric students generalises across word and event cues and that a computerised version of the AMT can be used as an alternative to interviews as a form of administration.     

Internet use and attitudes towards illicit internet use behavior in a sample of Russian college students.

This study assessed Internet use and attitudes toward illicit use of the Internet in a sample of Russian college students. A sample comprised of 198 students was recruited from a university in Moscow. Each participant completed a survey assessing demographic characteristics, Internet use, and attitudes towards engaging in illicit behaviors over the Internet. About half of the students reported that they used the Internet at least several times a year, with 8% reporting daily use of the Internet. Among Internet users, most reported having Internet access either at home or at a friends' home, and 16 % reported having Internet access from work, school, or a computer center. Among Internet users, the main purpose was for school-related activities (60%), followed by e-mail (55%), entertainment (50%), chatting (24%), and searching for pornography (6%). Although most students thought it was inappropriate to read someone else's e-mail, use someone else's password or credit card information without their permission, or break into someone's computer, many students did endorse those illicit behaviors. Over a fifth of the students reported that they knew hackers. Forty three percent of students agreed that people make too much fuss about watching videos, movies or downloading music on the Internet without paying. Males were more likely than females to report using the Internet for entertainment purposes (p = 0.006) and were more likely to agree that it was okay to break into someone's computer (p = 0.04). The results of this study suggest that these Russian college students predominately use the Internet to help with their schoolwork, to communicate with others, and for entertainment. These results also suggest that interventions may be useful to change attitudes endorsing illicit uses of the Internet.     

Young Soccer Players' Reports of a Tournament Win or Loss: Different Emotions,Different Narratives

This research examined the effects of differences in the emotions associated with an event on participants' reports of the experience. Forty-eight 10-year-old participants in a soccer tournament reported their final competition shortly after the game and 5 weeks later. Although all children reported the same event, members of winning vs. losing teams had very different emotional experiences that were associated with differences in their event reports. Members of winning teams reported a greater proportion of central information and provided more cohesive narratives than did members of losing teams, whose narratives included relatively more interpretation of the event. Few differences in elicited recall were observed. Although the delay did not affect the between-group differences in the narratives, the players on the winning and losing teams increasingly diverged over time in their ratings of the quality of play. The implications of participants' interpretations of experiences on long-term remembering are discussed.     

Actually,a picture is worth less than 45 words: Narratives produce more false memories than photographs do

Most memory “implantation” studies have elicited false memories by using fake narratives. Recently, Wade, Garry, Read, and Lindsay (2002) showed that doctored photographs can be used to create false childhood memories in adults. Fifty percent of Wade et al.’s sample reported details of taking a childhood hot air balloon ride, although they had never been in a balloon. In this experiment, we investigated whether photos or narratives influence memory more than the other. We exposed subjects to either a fake photograph or a fake narrative of a childhood hot air balloon ride. Subjects tried to remember the false event and three real events over 1 week. Narratives were more likely to produce false memory reports than were photos. We offer a fluency-based account of our results and suggest that narratives promote more familiarity in subjects than do photographs.     

Children's judgments of event upsettingness and personal experiencing of stressful events

Five-hundred and three urban and suburban 4th- to 6th-grade schoolchildren judged event upsettingness and reported the occurrence of 22 life events. Judgments of event upsettingness ranged considerably, some corresponding to, others differing from, adult judgments. Children reported experiencing an average of seven events during their lifetimes. Girls judged events to be more upsetting than boys, and fourth and fifth graders judged events to be more upsetting than sixth graders. Urban children reported having experienced more stressful events than suburban children, and sixth graders experienced more events than fourth graders.     

Finding evidence of dispositional coping

Data from college students and their parents were used in this longitudinal investigation, the primary goal of which was to examine the conditions under which coping style and coping behaviors are related. Participants completed a dispositional coping measure and reported on their coping with the most stressful event of the week for six weeks. Reports about the participants’ dispositional coping were also collected from the participants’ parents. Findings were consistent with the expectation that style would be a fairly weak predictor of coping in a given encounter but would predict more strongly aggregated coping responses across encounters. Additionally, parents tended to agree with each other about their child’s coping style, but the correlations between child and parental reports were generally small and nonsignificant.     

Gender,instrumentality, and expressivity: Moderators of the relation between stress and psychological symptoms during adolescence

Examined the roles of gender, instrumentality, and expressivity as moderator of the relations between stressful events and psychological symptoms in samples of junior high (n = 93), senior high (n = 140), and college students (n = 145). Female adolescents in all three samples reported more overall negative events than did males. Females in the junior and senior high samples reported more negative interpersonal stresses than did males. However, there were no indications in any of the samples of a stronger relation between negative events and psychological symptoms for adolescent females than males. Further, there was little evidence that instrumentality or expressivity moderated the relations between negative events and psychological symptoms. In each sample, certain stresses were most strongly related to psychological symptoms: family stresses in the junior high, peer stresses in the senior high, and academic stresses in the college sample. Implications of the findings for developmental changes in stress during adolescence are discussed.