5-9岁儿童自传记忆与自我概念的发展及其关系

The Development of Autobiographical Memory and Self-Concept of Children Aged from Five to Nine and Their Relationship

自传记忆是关于个体生活事件的记忆,与自我组织结构相互影响。为在同一语言文化背景下探讨个体自传记忆与自我概念发展的关系,研究者对81名5-9岁儿童进行访谈,结果发现:(1)年龄较大儿童的自传记忆更丰富、具体,涉及更多的他人及社会信息。(2)自我概念在7-9岁之间发展迅速且他人、社会自我日益丰富。(3)儿童自传记忆与自我概念发展无显著性别差异。(4)儿童自传记忆与自我概念存在多方面相关,其中他人、社会成分相关显著,也显示自传记忆与自我概念发展的关联具有跨文化的普遍性。

Many researches indicate that self-concept plays an important role in one’s autobiographical memories. And the relationship of autobiographical memory and self-concept is complicated. But almost all of researchers started from a cross-culture perspective. To examine the purer relationship of them, this article controled the cultural effects so as to discover something new. 98 Chinese children aged from 5-9 participated in the interview. And 81 valid data were used for analysis because 17 children didn’t finish the interview. Before the procedure began, 12 postgraduate interviewers, all preschool education majors, spent several days in classrooms to become familiar with the children. At the beginning of the interview, the interviewer chatted with the child to establish rapport. When the children seemed relaxed and comfortable, the interview began. The first step was autobiographical memory interview. The children were asked two questions：1） Could you please tell me one thing that happened to you recently？ 2） Many children remember what happened to them when they were very young. Do you remember yours？ Would please tell me one thing that happened to you when you were very young？ After that, the examiners played with the child for 5 minutes. And then the second step started. During the self-concept interview, the child was asked, ＂ （the child’s name）, your Mom/ principle （head teacher） wants me to write about all of the children in our class. And there must be something about you. So could you tell me what I should write about you？＂ After that, the examiners asked the children to complete sentences ＂I am ____＂and ＂ I like____＂ and ＂ （the child’s name） ______＂ until the child indicated by speech or gesture that he or she was finished. At the end of the interview, the interviewer gave each child a small gift to keep. The interviews were transcribed verbatim onto paper. The volume of the memory narrative was coded by counting the total number of Chinese characters spoken by the children. Each memory was coded as either specific or general. And each memory was coded as positive or negative or neutral. The number of times children spontaneously mentioned emotions was also counted including both emotion words and feeling states expressed by verbs. The number of other people the children introduced in their memories was counted and also the number of instances that involved social interactions or group activities. ＂ Self/other ratio＂ was used to index children’s social orientation. Children’s responses to the four open-ended questions of self-description were pooled together for coding. Propositions, defined as subject-verb constructions, were used as a coding unit. Each self-description was coded according to the following four coding schemes： organization in which children’s self-descriptions was coded as private, collective, or public; evaluation which was further coded as positive, negative, or neutral; Abstraction in which two mutually exclusive but not exhaustive coding categories were used to capture the Abstract-specific dimension of children’s self descriptions and also the content which indicates the trait-behavior dimension. Besides the four coding schemes, this article also adopted the physical self, the relational self, the academic self and others to indicate children’s self awareness. The results showed 1） Children’s autobiographical memory including memory volume（F（2,78）=10.646, p0.001）, number of others（F（2,78）=3.305, p0.05）and interaction scenario（F（2,78）=4.213, p0.05） developed with age. 2） Total scores of children’s self-concept developed with age especially from Grade 1 to Grade 3（F（2,78）=6.307, p0.01）. 3） There were no gender differences in the development of autobiographical memory and self-concept. 4） The relationship of children’s autobiographical memory and self-concept was remarkable.