Earliest Childhood Memories: Four Theoretical Perspectives

Cloning the clinician: a method for assessing illusory mental health

Self-report mental health scales cannot distinguish between genuine mental health and the facade or illusion of mental health created by psychological defenses. Shedler, Mayman, and Manis (1994) demonstrated that experienced clinicians can differentiate genuine from illusory mental health using the Early Memory Test, and that illusory mental health may be a risk factor for medical illness. This article describes the development of the Early Memory Index (EMI), a formal scoring system for the Early Memory Test, and presents evidence for its reliability and validity. The EMI makes the technique for assessing illusory mental health accessible to a wide range of investigators, including investigators who lack extensive clinical training.

The plasticity of early memory reports: social pressure, hypnotizability, compliance, and interrogative suggestibility

Early autobiographical memory reports by adults were very sensitive to social influence in a leading interview. The mean age of initial earliest memory report was 3.7 years. When participants were instructed to close their eyes, visualize, and focus on their 2nd birthday, 59% reported a birthday memory. After repeated probes for earlier memories, 78% of subjects reported memories at or prior to 24 months of age, and 33% reported memories within the first 12 months of age. The mean age of the final earliest memory reported was 1.6 years. Participants rated their memory reports as accurate and did not recant them when given an opportunity. The age of earliest memory reports in the suggestive interview correlated negatively with measures of compliance, hypnotizability, and interrogative suggestibility.

Primary attachment in female adolescents: association with depression, self-esteem, and maternal identification

DURING the past two decades, infant and child research has accumulated considerable support for John Bowlby's views on the importance of early attachment experience (1958, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1988). Briefly stated, Bowlby's theory conceptualized infant-mother attachment as a primary instinct, separate from other physiological needs (such as hunger or sex), and serving the purpose of continuing proximity to a caregiver. Children generate "internal working models of attachment" that influence the organization of their attachment-seeking behaviors (Bowlby 1980). During childhood these models are being actively and continuously constructed by the child. Toward the end of adolescence, however, they tend to become stable and serve as a template for later attachments throughout the life cycle. Narrative reconstruction of these attachment models by young adults recalling their childhood can be considered as a dynamic "summary statement" regarding the child's attempts and caregiver's responses in the maintenance of attachment bonds, rather than as verifiable facts (Main and Kaplan 1985).

The five-factor model in personality: a critical appraisal

This critical appraisal aims to position the five-factor model within the multifaceted field of personality psychology by highlighting six important limitations of the model. These are the model's (a) inability to address core constructs of personality functioning beyond the level of traits; (b) limitations with respect to the prediction of specific behavior and the adequate description of persons' lives; (c) failure to provide compelling causal explanations for human behavior and experience; (d) disregard of the contextual and conditional nature of human experience; (e) failure to offer an attractive program for studying personality organization and integration; and (f) reliance on simple, noncontingent, and implicitly comparative statements about persons. The five-factor model is essentially a "psychology of the stranger," providing information about persons that one would need to know when one knows nothing else about them. It is argued that because of inherent limitations, the Big Five may be viewed as one important model in personality studies but not the integrative model of personality.

Adlerian-oriented early memory research: what does it tell us?

Of the different approaches to interpreting early memories (EMs), Adlerian-oriented EM research comparatively has shown a most substantial increase in the past 10 years. I examine all Adlerian-oriented EM research appearing from 1981 through 1990. The majority of the research provides a tentative base of support for Adler's (1931) views about EMs. However, several deficiencies in these investigations are identified (e.g., a lack of pilot studies), and some recommendations are made for future EM studies.

Affect in Early Memories of Borderline Patients

Psychoanalytically oriented observers using the framework of object relations theory noted that patients with borderline personality organization manifest serious pathology in their capacity to use internalized imagery to cope with the vicissitudes of separation-individuation. This study examined one source of such imagery, the affect associated with a specific sample of early memories, including the earliest recollections of parents. Patients with borderline personality disorder were compared with paranoid schizophrenics and patients with neurotic character pathology. Forty-five outpatients, 15 in each group, participated in the study. It was found that borderline patients had significantly fewer positively toned early memories than neurotics or paranoid schizophrenics. Only the neurotic group, had a majority of affectively positive memories. The results are generally consistent with object relations theories of borderline psychopathology.

Predicting depression using earliest childhood memories

In order to investigate the utility of earliest childhood memories (EMs) in clinical assessment, this study investigated the value of EMs in predicting naturally occurring depressive mood states. Of interest were those features of EMs that discriminate depressed from nondepressed individuals. Subjects were 212 undergraduate volunteers who completed the Beck Depression Inventory, the Profile of Mood States, and a self-administered EM questionnaire. Utilizing thematic predictors derived from cognitive and psychodynamic theories of depression, depressed subjects were differentiated from nondepressed subjects at a rate significantly greater than chance, p less than .001, with a highly respectable estimate of cross-validation shrinkage. The findings demonstrate the phenomenon of mood dependent recall in autobiographical memory, namely, that memory attributes are strongly influenced by current mood state. Consistent with psychodynamic theories of depression and in contrast to cognitive theory, depressive mood states appear to facilitate retrieval of memory schemas involving deprivation and disturbing human interaction. Schemas involving loss of control, failure, or reactions to noncontingent reinforcement (perceptions of the self as agent) appear less salient than relationship schemas (perceptions of the self as related) in depressive experience.

Childhood amnesia: a conceptualization in cognitive-psychological terms

Childhood amnesia is defined operationally as the forgetting of early life events to a significantly greater degree than is accounted for by "normal" forgetting, which is an increasing recall decrement as time since occurrence increases. Three cognitive processes and their developmental changes are discussed which, when considered with psychodynamic factors, may broaden the understanding of childhood amnesia. It is argued that psychoanalytic theory and technique can benefit from the research and methods of cognitive psychology.

The psychodiagnostic value of children's earliest memories

Examined the early memories of 94 boys, aged 8 through 11, with varying levels of psychopathology. Via a newly developed early memory scoring system, subjects were classified according to degree of presenting psychopathology at a highly significant level. The scoring system classifications were also more accurate than those made by experienced clinicians. The importance of scoring system structural variables in making adjustment/maladjustment decisions was emphasized.

Earliest memories and the dynamics of delinquency

Data from the first two childhood memories was used to distinguish 15 delinquents from 18 nondelinquent controls. Subjects were male, middle class, 15-17 years of age, and equated for verbal IQ. All delinquents were property offenders. A coding system, devised from the memories of the delinquents and nondelinquents, successfully identified 80% of the delinquents and 100% of the nondelinquents. These prediction rates exceeded those from three clinicians experienced in working with a comparable delinquent population. The coding system was then discussed in terms of the axioms and presuppositions which are suggested by the memories of the delinquent sample.