AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY AND METACOGNITION

Background of the problem.

Autobiographic memory in our research is treated as higher mental process which has cultural and historic nature. Following cultural and historic theory of  L. Vygotsky (Vygotsky, 1978), we consider that individual memory has grown from collective (social memory) and is represented by the symbols in the cognition (Zasiekina, 2014). Memory similar to thinking is influenced by the language; therefore we can study the autobiographical memory from psycholinguistic perspective. Memory as cognitive process is closely connected with metacognition, cognitive styles in part, as they manage representation, storage and retrieval of information. Notwithstanding the importance of cultural-historic and psycholinguistic approach to autobiographical memory there are no complex and reliable experimental data in the psychological literature.

The aim of the research is experimental study of psycholinguistic representation of the life events and the impact of cognitive styles on the autobiographical memory.

The cultural and historic methodology allows studying autobiographical memory based on the students narratives and revealing cultural scripts in their representation of life events. From this perspective creating narratives includes cultural biographies (or culturally canonical narrative forms), life scripts (culturally shared expectations towards chronological order of significant life events) and master narratives (schematic representations of abstracted information about the cultural standards that individuals should use to position themselves in the autobiographical narrative). There are Jungian archetypes for master narratives “The  Hero”, “The Great Mother”, ”The Trickster”, “The Mentor”, produced by the certain culture

(Fivush et al. 2011).  According to this view, autobiographical narratives express how the individual and culture interact and disclose the importance of culture in the optimizing the the process of PTSD treatment.

Among the principle metacognitive processes which regulate autobiographical memory are development of metacognitive experience, openness of cognitive stand, field independent/dependent cognitive styles and prediction of future events. Metacognitive experience regulates memory processes, decentralizing them; openness of cognitive stand indicates the range of different life events perception and interpretation; prediction of future events determines the positive, negative or neutral attitude to the future which often leads to cognitive objectivity or distortions,  field independent/dependent cognitive styles areclosely connected with the analytical/synthetical thinking (Kholodnaya, 2002) .

Materials and methods. The narratives were recorded in eighty students (eighteen males, sixty two females, 17-22 yr old, mean 19,07) with no reporting PTSD problems.  Instruction was to write positive or negative narratives about life event. After recording and analyzing the narratives we found out that 10 narratives were negative and 70 positive. In other words, the students are more concentrated on the positive events than on negative ones.

Table 1

Psycholinguistic peculiarities of the narratives

The first psycholinguistic index shows the tendency to represent negative narratives in larger number of words in comparison with positive ones. It correlates with higher index of lexical density in the positive narratives, which can be determined by the greater number of repetitions describing negative events. The repetitions can denote cognitive distortions in the interpreting negative event. The higher indices of verbs and logical coherence denote tendency to rationalize the negative events and to find objective reasons for them. It is connected with the fact that all subjects do not report the symptoms of PTSD. Therefore the rationalizing the negative events and describing it in the causative consecutive conjunctions will lead to thorough cognitive processing of negative events and avoiding PTSD. The higher indices of verbs express the freshness and easy retrieval of negative events in comparison with the positive one. Typical description of negative events was expressed by the sentences “I remember as if it was yesterday”…

The results of autobiographical memory and metacognition study show that

1. The subjects of negative narratives have larger metacognitive experience (according to the test “Ecological prediction of Earth”) M = 8,3 and M=7,5).

2. The subjects of negative narratives predict more neutral events and the subjects of positive narratives concentrate predominantly on negative events in the future.

3. The subjects of negative narratives have more open cognitive stand, which is in line with the larger metacognitive experience. In other words, their negative experience is assimilated and processed in the proper way that help them avoiding PTSD.

4. The higher percentage of field independent cognitive styles are revealed among the subjects of negative narratives (М=40%; M=27%). It is in line with the higher level of metacognitive experience among the subjects of negative narratives. Considering the correlation of analytical thinking and field independent cognitive style we can assume that latter has a strong impact on proper processing the negative life events and avoiding PTSD.

Discussion. The present study was aimed at determining whether the subjects of negative and positive life narratives differ in their psycholinguistic and metacognitive peculiarities. Our results indicate that logical processing of the negative events mediating by verbs, causative consecutive conjunctions, linguistic repetitions, metacognitive experience and metacognitive open stand, field independent cognitive styles lead to proper cognitive processing negative life event and avoiding PTSD. The further study of autobiographical memory and metacognition can contribute a lot to PTSD treatment process.

1. Fivush R., Habermas T., Waters T. E.A., Zaman W. (2011). The making of autobiographical memory: intersections of culture, narratives and identity.  International Journal of Psychology, 46 (5), 321-345.
2. Kholodnaya, M. A. (2002). Kognitiivnii stili: O prirode individual’nogo uma [Cognitive styles: On the nature of individual mind]. Moscow, Russia: PER SE.
3. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4. Zasiekina, L. (2014) Psycholinguistic reorganization of individual traumatic memory // East European Journal of Psycholinguistics. – Vol.  2. – P. 87-94.