Otobiyografik bellek süreçleri

The purpose of the current dissertation was to examine effects of highly scripted frequent life events on lifespan autobiographical remembering in addition to investigate how life events become typical and scripted further affecting memory for repeated events. For that aim, three individual studies were conducted. The first one applied a novel manipulation by instructing the participant to exclude the most frequently reported life events in their reports. This novel manipulation resulted in the disappearance of the regularly observed reminiscence bump in the lifespan distribution of autobiographical memories. Suppression of typical life events also weakened the bump in the life script distribution. Thus, it was argued that characteristics of typical life events themselves may have a role in the emergence of the reminiscence bump by corresponding to that particular period of life as a result of certain biological and social constraints. The second study, questioned the possibility of inhibition in the results of the first study. More specifically, the disappearance of the bump might have resulted from an overall inhibition of the life events from the bump period as the events to be excluded were mainly coming from that period. Different from the first study, no manipulation was applied. Rather, exactly the same list of events was removed after the data collection. Once more, the robust reminiscence bump disappeared in the distribution of life scripts and autobiographical memories. Thus, the second study supported and extended the findings of the first study by showing that they were not an artifact of inhibitory processes. Finally, the third study examined memory for repeated event in a special sample with two different event types with different repetition rates. Dancers reported memories of competitions and shows and further rated their report with respect to several event qualities (e.g., importance, emotional valence). Results displayed that with repetition competitions and shows became as ordinary as watching a movie for dancers as they were similar in all event qualities at the time of retrieval. Furthermore, events remembered first were rated higher in all event qualities than the ones reported third. Likewise, event qualities displayed a steady decline with the passage of time between encoding and retrieval. The mechanisms underlying the retrieval of particular instances among several repeated instances were discussed based on the relevant theoretical approaches. Overall, the present dissertation contributed to autobiographical memory research by showing the impact of characteristics of typical life events on the emergence of the reminiscence bump and exploring the possible mechanisms active during retrieval of recurring events.