The role of cultural and individual factors in autobiographical memory development

This chapter focuses on the role of culture and self-construals in autobiographical memory development, with particular attention to mother-child reminiscing. Previous literature has demonstrated systematic findings regarding the characteristics of mother-child dyads that bear on children’s memory performance and are associated with differences in the construction of the self.We discuss the state of the field in terms of how self-construal is best conceptualized and include recent findings from studies of children in Turkey, Iran and Colombia. We note the importance of both individual differences within cultures and cross-cultural differences in self-construal, along with other factors, in explaining effects on mothers’ reminiscing style and autobiographical memory