Cultural self-goals influence how much is remembered from early childhood events

Prior work examining the role of cultural self-goals on the retrieval of early memories treated the presence of self-goals; such as autonomy and relatedness, as a binary category which has led to overlooking within-group nuances. Here, based on the idea that these goals co-exist in varying degrees in individuals, we explore the relative contributions of self-goals on age-at-event and the level of detail in positive and negative early memories.

Participants (N = 119) recalled and dated two earliest positive and negative memories that they were highly confident were memories, and answered a set of questions about event-specific details. They also completed a self-construal scale.

For positive memories, Autonomous-Related Self scores predicted both the age-at-event and the amount of detail in early memories, while. no such relationship was observed for negative memories.

Together these findings indicate that cultural self-goals operate on the accessibility of early memories not only at the level of the boundaries of childhood amnesia but also on how much is recalled from early experiences.