In this study, the relationship of autobiographical memory, implicit motivation, sociocultural orientation, and childhood variables was investigated cross-culturally. A German sample reflecting a prototypical independent context (n=100), and a Chinese (n = 77) and Cameroonian sample (n = 68) from a prototypical interdependent context were selected. Participants were asked to report their earliest childhood memories, to answer socio-demographic questions, to complete the Operant Multimotive Test as a measure of their implicit motivation, and two self-report scales to indicate their sociocultural orientation. Special attention was given to considerations of methodological equivalence across cultures.It was expected that (1) Chinese and Cameroonian participants recall more oriented towards others than German participants, and that (2) individuals from a social-oriented childhood context make more use of the social function of autobiographical recall, and finally that (3) implicit motivation and sociocultural orientation predict autobiographical memory across cultures.Results indicate that Cameroonian and Chinese participants generally make more use of the social function of autobiographical memory than do German participants. Furthermore, the more siblings an individual has, the more she/he makes use of the social function. Missing effects of implicit motivation and sociocultural orientation on interindividual differences in autobiographical memory are accounted for by methodological constraints.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uni-osnabrueck.de/oai:repositorium.ub.uni-osnabrueck.de:urn:nbn:de:gbv:700-2006081114 |
| Date | 09 August 2006 |
| Creators | Bender, Michael |
| Contributors | Prof. Dr. Heidi Keller, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Kriz, Prof. Dr. Barbara Woike |
| Source Sets | Universität Osnabrück |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:doctoralThesis |
| Format | application/zip, application/pdf |
| Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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