Late adolescent identity development: narrative meaning making and memory telling

Personally important autobiographical memories are the smallest unit of the life story, which begins to emerge in adolescence. This study examined 2 features of self-defining memories in late adolescence, the meaning made of the memories to garner an understanding of the narrative construction of identity as a life story and how those memories were told with an emphasis on the functions for telling and audiences to understand the social component of narrative identity development. For late adolescents (N = 185), meaning was infrequently reported for the entertainment function in comparison with the self-explanation function. At later ages, adolescents' audiences were more likely to be peers, and at earlier ages, adolescents' audiences were more likely to be parents. Discussion focuses on the individual and social levels of identity construction that are apparent in personally important autobiographical memory narratives.