An examination of the relationship between perceived social support, autobiographical memory functions and autobiographical memory characteristics in early and late adulthood

The aim of this study is to investigate the developmental differences of autobiographical memory characteristics in young adults and elderly individuals. It is also to investigate the relationship between perceived social support and autobiographical memory functions with autobiographical memory characteristics. Under the influence of theoretical approaches that emphasize the fact that memory is not a recording device which tapes every single detail precisely; the autobiographical memory characteristics were examined with various sociocultural variables. In this study, the relationship between perceived social support from family and friends as a social variable with the autobiographical memory characteristics were examined. Young adults (n = 85) and old (n = 85) participants retrieved their autobiographical memories in response to the cue words family and friends. According to the findings of the study, both family and friends narratives of older participants were more vivid than young adults' narratives. While the perceived social support from family was found to be positively related to the level of detail and clarity of the family narrative, the perceived social support from the friends was found to be related to the age of memory and specificity of friends memory. The findings were discussed in the light of previous researches. In the future, cross-sectional or longitudinal studies including childhood and adolescence samples are considered to be very valuable for the literature. Keywords: autobiographical memory, perceived social support, functions of autobiographical memory, young adults, elderly