2001
DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.81.2.220
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Culture effects on adults' earliest childhood recollection and self-description: Implications for the relation between memory and the self.

Abstract: American and Chinese college students (N = 256) reported their earliest childhood memory on a memory questionnaire and provided self-descriptions on a shortened 20 Statements Test (M. H. Kuhn & T. S. McPartland, 1954). The average age at earliest memory of Americans was almost 6 months earlier than that of Chinese. Americans reported lengthy, specific, self-focused, and emotionally elaborate memories; they also placed emphasis on individual attributes in describing themselves. Chinese provided brief accounts o… Show more

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Cited by 332 publications
(414 citation statements)
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“…In line with these analyses, we have found that compared with Asians, European and Euro-American adults are able to access more distant and more detailed very-longterm memories such as early childhood experiences, retrieve more frequently unique, onetime episodes (as opposed to generic events), and focus more on their own roles and predilections (e.g., Wang, 2001aWang, , 2006a. We have found the same pattern of cultural differences in children as young as age 3 or 4 (Han, Leichtman, & Wang, 1998;Peterson, Wang, & Hou, 2009;Wang, 2004).…”
Section: Self-construalsupporting
confidence: 63%
“…In line with these analyses, we have found that compared with Asians, European and Euro-American adults are able to access more distant and more detailed very-longterm memories such as early childhood experiences, retrieve more frequently unique, onetime episodes (as opposed to generic events), and focus more on their own roles and predilections (e.g., Wang, 2001aWang, , 2006a. We have found the same pattern of cultural differences in children as young as age 3 or 4 (Han, Leichtman, & Wang, 1998;Peterson, Wang, & Hou, 2009;Wang, 2004).…”
Section: Self-construalsupporting
confidence: 63%
“…They found that participants who strongly identified as Asian Americans tended to generate a higher proportion of social, and lower proportion of autonomous, self-descriptions compared to European Americans. Similarly, Wang (2001) examined the self-descriptions generated by American and Chinese college students. The American students tended to describe themselves using autonomous traits (such as being studious) more frequently than the Chinese students, who generated more collective, social descriptions (such as being a sister).…”
Section: Cross-cultural Possible Selvesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In spite of the large body of cross-cultural work comparing self-construals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991;Wang, 2001;Wang, 2004), autobiographical memories (Wang, 2006;Wang & Conway, 2004) and life scripts (e.g., Ottsen & Berntsen, 2014;Rubin, Berntsen & Hutson, 2009) to our knowledge, no work has directly compared the possible selves of people living in different countries. Previous research has focused on the possible selves of participants from a range of specific cultures including aboriginals (Senior & Chenhall, 2012) and Latinos (Yowell, 2000).…”
Section: Possible Selvesmentioning
confidence: 99%
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