MacDonald S, Uesiliana K, Hayne H
Psychology Department, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Memory. 2000 Nov;8(6):365-76. doi: 10.1080/09658210050156822.
In two experiments, we examined cross-cultural and gender differences in adults' earliest memories. To do this, we asked male and female adults from three cultural backgrounds (New Zealand European, New Zealand Maori, and Asian) to describe and date their earliest personal memory. Consistent with past research, Asian adults reported significantly later memories than European adults, however this effect was due exclusively to the extremely late memories reported by Asian females. Maori adults, whose traditional culture includes a strong emphasis on the past, reported significantly earlier memories than adults from the other two cultural groups. Across all three cultures, the memories reported by women contained more information than the memories reported by men. These findings support the view that the age and content of our earliest memories are influenced by a wide range of factors including our culture and our gender. These factors must be incorporated into any comprehensive theory of autobiographical memory.
在两项实验中，我们研究了成年人最早记忆中的跨文化差异和性别差异。为此，我们让来自三种文化背景（新西兰欧洲裔、新西兰毛利人和亚洲人）的成年男性和女性描述并注明他们最早的个人记忆。与过去的研究一致，亚洲成年人报告的记忆时间明显晚于欧洲成年人，然而这种效应完全是由于亚洲女性报告的记忆时间极晚。毛利成年人的传统文化非常重视过去，他们报告的记忆时间明显早于其他两个文化群体的成年人。在所有三种文化中，女性报告的记忆包含的信息比男性报告的记忆更多。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即我们最早记忆的年龄和内容受到包括文化和性别在内的多种因素的影响。任何关于自传体记忆的综合理论都必须纳入这些因素。
