The Psychological and Social Origins of Autobiographical Memory

TitleThe Psychological and Social Origins of Autobiographical Memory
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication1993
AuthorsKatherine Nelson
JournalPsychological Science
Volume4
Issue1
Pagination7 -14
Abstract

Recent research on young children's memory for personal episodes provides new insights into the phenomenon of infantile amnesia, first identified by Freud. New research indicates that children learn to share memories with others, that they acquire the narrative forms of memory recounting, and that such recounts are effective in reinstating experienced memories only after the children can utilize another person's representation of an experience in language as a reinstatement of their own experience. This competence requires a level of mastery of the representational function of language that appears at the earliest in the mid to late preschool years.

URLhttp://pss.sagepub.com/content/4/1/7.abstract
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00548.x