Browsing by Author "Gülgöz, Sami"

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Citation - WoS: 2
Comparison of Earliest and Later Autobiographical Memories in Young and Middle-Aged Adults
(Istanbul Univ, 2019) Ece, Berivan; Yaman, Sezin Öner; Demiray, Burcu; Öner, Sezin; Gülgöz, Sami
The current study examined earliest memories of young and middle-aged adults in comparison to a recent autobiographical memory and a free-report one from any life phase. These three types of memories were compared in terms of their memory characteristics such as vividness, emotionality. importance, confidence, and rehearsal frequency. A total of 319 young (18-30 years) and 112 middle-aged (40-65 years) adults completed the online survey. Results showed that earliest memories were rated either similar to or lower than later memories in their memory characteristics. More specifically. they received lower ratings than free-report memories in all memory characteristics whereas they did not significantly differ from recent memories only in importance and emotionality. In addition, free-report memories were highest in emotionality, importance and rehearsal frequency whereas recent memories were highest in vividness and confidence ratings. Compared to young adults, middle-aged adults provided higher ratings for all memory characteristics in general, and they further recalled earliest memories from an older age. Finally, the order of reporting the three types of memories (earliest memory first versus recent memory first) was examined with respect to its potential influence on memory characteristics and dating of the recalled memories. Results displayed no significant effect of the reporting order on memory characteristics. Dating of the earliest and free-report memories, however, was significantly affected by the reporting order. The mean age for earliest memories was higher when it was retrieved following the recent memory compared to the reporting order in which earliest memories are retrieved and reported first. Overall, results indicated that earliest memories arc not particularly special compared to later memories (e.g.. free-report memories) in terms of their memory characteristics, and they are vulnerable to experimental manipulation such as changing the reporting order just like other types of autobiographical memories.
Family Reminiscence Scale: a Measure of Early Communicative Context
(2020) Öner, Sezin; Yaman, Sezin Öner; Ece, Berivan; Gülgöz, Sami
We developed and validated the Family Reminiscence Scale (FARS) in which adults rate their frequency ofreminiscing with their parents about childhood experiences. In three studies, we characterized how FARS wasrelated to adults’ recollections of their earliest memories in different cultural contexts. First, we examined thefactorial structure of FARS and obtained two factors of reminiscing: first-time events and general-recurrent events.In the second study, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted, in which we established measurementinvariance across gender and age groups. In Study 3, we tested the factorial structure of FARS in an Americansample to ensure cross-cultural invariance. We also showed that the two factors were differentially related to thephenomenology of earliest memories in samples from Turkey and United States (Study 2 & Study 3). Overall,FARS was found to be reliable and valid to measure for adult samples to assess the quality of the linguistic inputduring childhood. Predictive value of FARS has been shown across different gender, age, and culture groups,underlining the organizational role of the early communicative context in the phenomenology and linguistic styleof adults’ early memories.© 2020 JLLS and the Authors - Published by JLLS.
Citation - WoS: 18
Citation - Scopus: 18
Representing the Collective Past: Public Event Memories and Future Simulations in Turkey
(Routledge, 2020) Öner, Sezin; Yaman, Sezin Öner; Gülgöz, Sami
Common processes involved in remembering and predicting personal and public events have led researchers to study public events as a part of autobiographical memory. In the present study, we asked for past events and future predictions and examined the temporal distribution and factors that made these salient in event representations. A sample of 1577 individuals reported six most important public events since their birth and six future events that they expected. Past events mostly came from the recent past and were negative in valence. Similarly, future predictions consisted of negative events that are expected to occur in the near past. We did not find a reminiscence bump but there was a strong recency effect. Despite being inconsistent with some literature, this supports the view that remembering the past is largely influenced by the current goals and experiences. Also, in predicting what is remembered from the past and what is expected in the future, what individuals believed others would report appeared as a robust predictor.