Understanding autobiographical memories: a study of the reminiscences of elderly men.
This study examined the stability of autobiographical memory constructs and provided data about male styles of reminiscing that are useful for expanding the generalizability of the Autobiographical Memory Coding Tool. Six males ranging in age from 76 to 84 who lived in the community served as subjects. Subjects participated in two one-to-one reminiscence interviews that were conducted 8 weeks apart. Interpretations formulated by this sample of elderly men were both validating and lamenting. Dominant themes in the transcripts were joys, social connections, difficulties, and choices. The frequency with which memories involving choice and lack of choice were verbalized suggest that control may be an important issue for this sample. The interpretations were quite stable with 91% agreement between Time 1 and Time 2 transcripts.
Kovach
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D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001325:Autobiographies as Topic; D005260:Female; D015577:Geriatric Assessment; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008571:Men / Q000523:psychology*; D009730:Nursing Assessment; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D015203:Reproducibility of Results