The Parent-Child-Reference Effect And Its Influencing Factors

Relative to the other memory processing, the processing of link material to the self that showed the best memory performance is defined as the self-reference effect (self-reference effect, SRE). SRE is the initial founding and also is classical reference effect. With the deepening of the research, researchers found that intimate other-reference also can get as good performance as self-reference memory. It is suggest the self has expansibility which contain significant others. On social norm sense, parents and children founded on congenital blood relationship are each other’s first intimate others, so parents and child should get similar memory advantage to SRE when they reference each other to process materials, should show the parent-child-reference effect. Child showed mother/father-reference has been widely proved by research about reference effect of memory. However, yet less researcher pay attention to whether child is contained in the self of parents. To explore child-reference effect, and to compare to parental-reference effect in the same context, we consider parent-child dyads as entry point.9,11and13years old child and their parents were selected randomly as parent-child dyads participants in our study, and they were guided to finish tasks matched for their developmental stage to explore to parent-child-reference effect. In addition, previous research shows that factors such as age, intimacy, gender can affect memory reference effect. So, in this study, we further to explore whether parent-child-reference effect was influenced by the age, intimacy and gender (role) both of the parent and child.To achieve the research purpose, we designed two experiments:In experiment1, children participants were come from parent-child dyads. It sets four reference conditions: "self, mother, father, semantic", speculates on whether there exists parental-reference effect and explore whether the age of the child, and if parental-reference effect affected by parental genuine intimacy, the gender of both parent and child. In experiment2, father or mother participant were come from parent-child dyads. It sets three conditions of "self, son/daughter, semantic" to speculate on whether existing child-reference effect and explore whether the age of the child, and if child-reference effect affected by child intimacy, the gender of both parent and child.The results of experiments revealed that:(1) On the whole, Chinese child showed parental-reference effect, but the factors of age, intimacy, the gender both parent and child were further considered, found that Only the age of the child, the gender both parent and child affect the parental-reference effect, intimacy does not.9,11years children showed parental-reference effect, but13years children showed no parental-reference effect. Whether mother or father reference, boy showed parental-reference effect, but only in mother-reference, girls showed parental-reference. Memory performance in parental-reference of parent-child with same-gender higher than that of parent-child with cross-gender. Intimacy did not affect the occurrence and performance of parental-reference.(2) On the whole, Chinese parents showed child-reference effect, but the factors of age, intimacy, the gender both parent and child were further considered, found that only the gender both parent and child affect the child-reference effect:whether son or daughter reference, mother showed child-reference effect, but only in daughter-reference, father showed child-reference. There is no significant difference in memory performance of child-reference between parent-child with same-gender higher and parent-child with cross-gender. Age of child did not affect the child-reference:9,11,13years child’s parents showed child-reference. Intimacy did not affect the occurrence and performance of child-reference. The results above suggested that Chinese parent-child dyads entering each other’s self, however, when taking into account the child’s age and the gender both parent and child, the result will be different.