Early memories as expressions of relationship paradigms: a preliminary investigation

Earliest versus other autobiographical memories of school-age children

Earliest memories have been the topic of scientific research for over a century and seen use as tools of clinical assessment. Still, it remains unclear whether they are in some way distinct or revealing about the person reporting them. This preregistered study examined whether children’s self-reported earliest memories differ from other memories, and how their features link with mood and gender. Urban 9–13-year-old children in Finland (N = 166) reported on their earliest memory and another old autobiographical memory, and mood. Memories were coded for specificity, thematic content, social orientation, and emotional content. No differences between earliest and other memories were noted in specificity, trauma- and accident-related content, or emotional content. However, earliest memories had more play- and less visit-related content and were less likely to be social. Negative mood did not generally correlate with features of memories. Girls reported more social earliest and other memories, and more positive earliest memories. The findings are compared to research in other cultural environments. Overall, they do not support a privileged position for the earliest memory as an object of scientific research or clinical assessment.

Early Memories are Only Fragments but Make Life More Comprehensible or Enhance Social Solidarity and are Frequently Verbalizable

Recollections of a very first memory by 58 students indicated that for 53% the memory helped understand later events, as Winograd suggested, and 52% of memory sharing increased social solidarity, as Nelson suggested. First memories reflected basic orientations as described by Erikson and not yet complex aspects of lifestyle as Adler believed. Students reported that 86% of memories were nonverbal but 62% could be verbalized well. Only 12% believed their first memory to reflect a complete event, and only 41% believed their recall to be completely accurate. When asked to recall more from the same early period, 36% could recall one more memory and 41% could recall two more.

Two Methods of Early Memories Data Collection: An Empirical Comparison of the Projective Yield

This study addresses a methodological issue regarding the preferred method of collecting early memories data—using an interpersonal administration to collect the data, or using a written procedure in which subjects are asked to record their early memories privately. Early memories from clinical and nonclinical control groups from two experimental conditions were scored on the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS). The results support the superiority of the interpersonal administration over the private, written condition in differentiating clinical from nonclinical controls. The results are discussed in the context of contemporary trends in personality assessment, which attempt to limit interpersonal contact with the patient during the assessment process, in order to save time and money. The authors contend that this practice may yield less complex and less fertile projective data than the traditional interpersonal testing context.

Attachment Style, Social Support, and Coping as Psychosocial Correlates of Happiness in Persons With Spinal Cord Injuries

Objective: To examine the roles of attachment, social support, and coping as psychosocial correlates in predicting happiness in people with spinal cord injuries.

Design: Quantitative descriptive research design using multiple regression and correlation techniques.

Participants: 274 individuals with spinal cord injuries.

Outcome Measures: Happiness as measured by the Subjective Happiness Scale.

Results: Functional disability and psychosocial correlates including coping, attachment styles, and social support were found to be associated with happiness scores. Functional disability was found to have a large negative effect on happiness and the effect was significantly reduced after taking into consideration the effect of positive psychology factors.

Conclusion: Positive psychology variables are important for happiness and subjective well-being, and happiness in turn is related to better quality of life. The negative relationship between functional disability and happiness can be mediated by attachment, social support, and coping. Rehabilitation professionals should deemphasize negative characteristics related to poor psychological adjustment and focus on positive human traits and positive psychology interventions for people with disabilities.

Borderline pathology and the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI): an evaluation of criterion and concurrent validity

In this study, we examined how patients diagnosed with borderline pathology (BP) would respond on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) Borderline (BOR) scales in relation to patients without BP pathology. In addition, we examined whether the PAI BOR scales would be related to variables on the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS; Hilsenroth, Stein, & Pinsker, 2004; Westen, 1995) derived from early memory narratives. Results indicate that outpatients with a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnosis of BP scored significantly higher on the PAI BOR Total (BOR-Total) score, Identity Problems, and Self- Harm scales in comparison to a Non-BP clinical sample. The overall correct classification rate for the presence or absence of BP using the BOR Total scale (T >or= 70) was 73%. In addition, there were several significant relationships between dimensional PAI BOR scales and the presence versus absence of DSM-IV BP. Moreover, both the BOR-Total and Affect Instability scales were significantly related to the SCORS variable Complexity of Representations. We provide clinical examples to illustrate these research findings in an applied manner.

Martin Mayman's early memories technique: bridging the gap between personality assessment and psychotherapy

In this article, we describe Martin Mayman's approach to early childhood memories as a projective technique, beginning with his scientific interest in learning theory, coupled with his interest in ego psychology and object relations theory. We describe Mayman's contributions to the use of the early memories technique to inform the psychotherapy process, tying assessment closely to psychotherapy and making assessment more useful in treatment. In this article, we describe a representative sample of research studies that demonstrate the reliability and validity of early memories, followed by case examples in which the early memories informed the therapy process, including issues of transference and countertransference.

Early memories and maladjustment

Earliest memories were elicited from 60 undergraduates, who also completed the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank, Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, Wahler Physical Symptoms Inventory, and Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Early memories were scored for the three factors identified by Caruso and Spirrison (Emotional Poise, Activity, and Dependability). These scores were not significantly associated with indices of maladjustment or the social desirability measure. Age at reported earliest memory was significantly related to maladjustment, with persons reporting first memories prior to 4 years of age having significantly higher scores on maladjustment, as measured by the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank, than individuals with first memories occurring later. Individuals whose first memories occurred after the age of 5 years reported significantly more somatic concerns than persons with early memories of average onset, i.e., 4 to 5 years of age.

Factor analytic structure and stability of the separation-individuation test of adolescence

The present study was undertaken to examine internal structural properties of the Separation-Individuation Test Adolescence (SITA; Levine, Green, & Millon, 1986). In 1990, 131 late adolescent undergraduate university students received the SITA; 2 years later, 79 of these same subjects were reassessed. Principal components analyses were conducted for the 1990 and 1992 samples, and internal consistency reliabilities (Cronbach's alpha) were calculated for each subscale. The internal structural properties converged moderately to strongly for the following scales: Practicing Mirroring, Engulfment Anxiety, Dependency Denial, Nurturance Seeking, and Teacher Enmeshment. These findings parallel those of Levine (in press). The developmental impact of the late adolescent separation-individuation process may explain in part some different clusterings of scale items over time.