Memory

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Factors that modulate the intergenerational

transmission of autobiographical memory from
older to younger generations

Xuan Gu, Chi-Shing Tse & Norman R. Brown

To cite this article: Xuan Gu, Chi-Shing Tse & Norman R. Brown (2019): Factors that modulate
the intergenerational transmission of autobiographical memory from older to younger generations,
Memory, DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2019.1708404

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2019.1708404

Published online: 30 Dec 2019.

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MEMORY
https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2019.1708404

Factors that modulate the intergenerational transmission of autobiographical

memory from older to younger generations
Xuan Gua,b, Chi-Shing Tseb,c and Norman R. Brownd
a
Department of Applied Psychology, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China;
b
Department of Educational Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China; cCentre for Learning
Sciences and Technologies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China; dDepartment of Psychology,
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The present study examined the intergenerational factors in transmitting autobiographical Received 14 August 2019
memories from one generation to the next. Older adults from Beijing, China reported a Accepted 17 December 2019
collection of personally important autobiographical memories and their middle-aged children
KEYWORDS
recalled important parental memories. The parent-child dyads independently recalled and Autobiographical memory;
provided ratings of mnemonic characteristics for the memories. Across generations, intergenerational
consensus memories, which refer to the memories that both parents and children considered transmission; important
as important in the parent’s life, were characterised by the substantial material change that memories; older adults and
the events brought about in their lives. While parent-child interaction affected the number of children; historical memories
events passed onto children, it only affected the number of script-divergent events that were
not recorded in the life script of a culture, but not the number of script-consistent events. In
addition, children whose parents were rusticated and relocated to rural areas during the
Cultural Revolution remembered more historical memories than children whose parents were
not rusticated. The findings shed light on the process that one generation gains the
biographical knowledge and historical experience of a prior generation. Theoretical
implications are discussed.

Intergenerational transmission serves as an informal mech-
anism by which memories and culture are transmitted
across generations (e.g., Hirst & Manier, 2008; Svob,
Brown, Takšić, Katulić, & Žauhar, 2016). For example, trau-
matic experiences can be passed on from parents to chil-
dren (e.g., Kaitz, Levy, Ebstein, Faraone, & Mankuta, 2009),
immigrant parents select cultural values to pass on their
children (e.g., Tam & Chan, 2015), and mothers from
different cultures interact differently with their young chil-
dren as a way of cultural transmission (e.g., Wang, 2001;
Wang, Doan, & Song, 2010). When the biographical knowl-
edge of an older generation is transmitted to the younger
generation, it contributes to the formation and mainten-
ance of a shared past; that is, the collective memory of a
family or even a nation.
Despite the significance of this topic, it is unclear why
some autobiographical events are remembered across
generations and others are not. The present study was
designed to address this issue by answering two questions.
(a) What are the characteristics of autobiographical mem-
ories that both parents and children remember and con-
sider important in the parent’s life? (b) What factors
could influence which parents’ autobiographical memories
are remembered by children? To this end, we collected
data from dyads comprised of an adult child and his or
her parent. The parents were first presented with a menu
that named 30 commonly nominated “important life
events”. Their tasks were: (a) to indicate which of these
events they had experienced, (b) to describe additional
events that they considered important in their own lives,
(c) to rate all experienced events in terms of their impor-
tance, transitional impact, vividness, emotional valence
and intensity, (d) to estimate the date when each event
occurred, and (e) to indicate the degree to which they con-
sidered each event to be socially desirable and whether
they wanted their children to know about it. (f) In addition,
these older individuals indicated whether they had been
“rusticated” (i.e., spent a portion of their teenaged years
on communal farm) during the Cultural Revolution. Adult
children recalled 10 important events from a parent’s life.
They also dated these events and rated their importance,
transitional impact, emotional valence, and emotional
intensity from both their own perspective and from the
parent’s perspective. Finally, they indicated the degree to
which each event related to the Cultural Revolution.
This dyadic design allowed us to: (a) identify consensus
events, i.e., events that both parents and children agreed
on their importance in the parent’s life, (b) characterise
the properties of these consensus events, and (c) specify
the ways in which consensus events differed from events

CONTACT Xuan Gu guxuan@gdufe.edu.cn

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 X. GU ET AL.
recalled only by a parent (i.e., parent-only events) or only by
a child (i.e., child-only events). In addition, because all the
parents lived through the Cultural Revolution and many
were rusticated in their youth, we were able to investigate
the intergenerational transmission of events tied to histori-
cal contexts and compare them with those of strictly per-
sonal nature. Below, we develop predictions for the
outcome of this study and review relevant findings and
theory.
Our first prediction concerns the relationship between
an event’s transitional impact and the likelihood that it
would be transmitted from one generation to the next.
At the outset, we expected consensus events would
receive high transitional impact scores and that these
scores would be higher than those assigned to parent-
only and child-only events. This prediction is based on
the transition theory (Brown, 2016) which posits that auto-
biographical memory is organised by transitional events
that produce high degrees of material and psychological
change in the ordinary circumstances of daily life. People
tend to select major transitional events when they recall
important events from their own lives (e.g., Glück &
Bluck, 2007; Gu, Tse, & Brown, 2017) and that major tran-
sitions organise autobiographical memory (e.g., Brown,
Schweickart, & Svob, 2016; Gu, Tse, & Chan, 2019), as well
as serve to define the chapters of life story (Thomsen,
Steiner, & Pillemer, 2016). In addition, in studies that
asked university students to nominate the 10 most impor-
tant events in their parents’ lives and to rate the properties
of those events, researchers found that most of the recalled
events received high ratings for transitional impact (Svob,
2014; Svob & Brown, 2012; Svob et al., 2016). Other
studies revealed that parents discussed their important
life transitions with their children (e.g., Fivush, Habermas,
Waters, & Zaman, 2011; Merrill, Booker, & Fivush, 2018)
and children knew their parents’ lives through these dis-
cussions. Thus, children should know about the major tran-
sitions experienced by their parents and these events
should figure prominently when children recall important
events from their parents’ lives.
Second, we examined parent’s motivation to pass an
event on and the overall quality of parent-child interaction
as potential factors in the process of memory transmission.
Most previous research that examined how parent-child
relationship affected memory focused on young children
and concerned the connection between a parent’s narra-
tive style and the development of autobiographical
memory (see Fivush et al., 2011; Salmon & Reese, 2016,
for review). We address a different issue here. Specifically,
we were interested in determining whether the richness
and frequency of parent-child interaction has a stronger
effect on the transfer of script-divergent events than it
does on script-consistent events. Given that knowledge
about cultural life script is widely shared in a society (e.g.,
Bohn & Berntsen, 2013), script-consistent events should
be easily accessible and frequently recalled by children
regardless of the nature of the parent-child interaction
and regardless of the parent’s intent to transfer the
memory. In contrast, we predicted that children whose
parents made an effort to convey information about their
own lives would recall more script-divergent events than
those whose parents were not interested in the transfer
of their life stories.
The third set of predictions concerns the temporal distri-
bution of the recalled events. Previous research found that
when adults over 30 years old are asked for important life
events they recall a disproportionate number of events
from young adulthood (see Koppel & Berntsen, 2015, for
a review) and that this effect is strongest for events
drawn from the cultural life script (Berntsen & Rubin,
2004; Koppel & Berntsen, 2016; Thomsen & Berntsen,
2008). We expected to replicate this result when examining
the temporal distribution of important parental memories
recalled by children, and find that the consensus events,
particularly those drawn from life scripts, would display
the standard important-events reminiscence bump. At
the same time, we speculated that there might be an ego-
centric bias in event selection (i.e., a tendency for children
to privilege shared memories over strictly vicarious ones). If
so, it is possible that the temporal distribution for the child-
only events would be shifted toward the present, relative
to the parent-only and consensus distribution.
The final set of predictions focuses on the intergenera-
tional transmission of historically- grounded personal
memories, particularly those related to the Cultural Revolu-
tion in China (1966–1976), a political movement that pene-
trated and roiled all strata of Chinese society in the late
1960s and early 1970s (Zhou & Hou, 1999). It is important
to note that individuals in the parent group were school-
aged at the time and that the Cultural Revolution disrupted
classes and often severely limited their academic and
career opportunities (Bonnin & Horko, 2013).
A prior study found that people who lived through the
Cultural Revolution often cited it as one of their most
important experiences and that the Revolution produced
a higher degree of material change in the rusticated indi-
viduals than in their non-rusticated counterparts (Gu
et al., 2017). We expected to replicate these findings.
More importantly, we were interested in whether the chil-
dren knew about their parents’ experiences during the
Revolution and whether this knowledge depends on
parent’s rustication experience. Assuming that the Cultural
Revolution played a larger role in the lives of rusticated
parents than non-rusticated parents and that this is
reflected in the information passed from one generation
to the next, it follows that children of rusticated parents
would recall more Revolution-related events than children
of non-rusticated parents; they would also consider the
Revolution to have been more impactful on their families.
Overall, the present study aimed to answer the two
research questions concerning (a) the characteristics of
consensus memories between parents and children
about the important events in the parent’s life, and (b)
the factors that influence the remembering and transfer

of consensus memories. We examined the issue in parent-
child dyads from Beijing, China, and collected a set of
important autobiographical memories from older adults
and a set of memories about important parental events
from their adult children. By comparing consensus events
to child-only or parent-only events, we found out their
differences in mnemonic characteristics. By comparing
the script-consistent and script-divergent events trans-
mitted from parents to children, we determined the critical
factors that influenced the transmission of different types
of events across generations. Likewise, by comparing
memories transmitted by rusticated individuals to those
transmitted by non-rusticated individuals, we hoped to
understand better the processes that bring one generation
into contact with the historical experiences of a prior
generation.
Method
Participants
Forty-three older Chinese in Beijing (22 males; age range
57–78, M = 64.98, SD = 3.78) and their children (19 males;
age range 29–45, M = 35.86, SD = 3.25) were recruited via
advertisement and voluntarily participated in the study.
On average, the older adults had lived in Beijing for
55.91 years (SD = 11.78) and had received 11.16 years of
education (SD = 3.40). The adult children all had obtained
college or university degree or above. Two additional
older adults participated but their children did not fill out
the questionnaire; thus, their data were discarded. Each
older adult received 150 CNY (the equivalent of 23 USD)
to compensate for the time they and their children spent
for the study. All data were collected in November and
December 2016.
Procedure and materials
Older participants were interviewed face-to-face in a quiet
room at their home or near their community. After com-
pleting an approximately 90 min task (see below), these
individuals were asked to give their children a sealed envel-
ope, which contained the instruction for an online ques-
tionnaire. Both the parents and their children were
informed that the children were required to complete
the questionnaire independently and without input from
their parents. The interval between parent’s and child’s
responses ranged from 0 to 23 days (M = 5.35, SD = 6.43).
All these procedures were approved by the CUHK Survey
and Behavioral Research Ethics Committee.
Parent’s task
The session consisted of three phases. In Phase 1, a
research assistant provided an event menu to help partici-
pants recall life events. The 30 events in the menu (i.e., the
30 events marked with an asterisk in Table 1) were drawn
from a corpus of events collected by and reported in Gu
MEMORY 3
et al. (2017); they were selected because they were fre-
quently mentioned and were considered to have been per-
sonally important. In the menu, there were both script-
consistent and script-divergent events and the public
event, Cultural Revolution, was also listed. The research
assistant read one event at a time to the participants
who indicated whether they had experienced it. If experi-
enced, participants estimated the year in which it took
place. When an individual could recall more than one
instance of a particular type of event (e.g., death of a
close family member, move to another community), he
or she was instructed to recall and date all relevant epi-
sodes. After working through all 30 events, participants
were asked to recall any additional events that they con-
sidered to have been important in their lives. Participants
briefly described the events they had experienced and
the research assistant wrote down a brief description for
each event.
Prior to Phase 2, each event that participants had
experienced was written down on the top of an event-
properties questionnaire. Participants then received their
events one at a time, in random order, with the exception
that the first event was always marriage. Using 5-point
scales, they rated the following properties for each event
(1 = completely disagree; 5 = completely agree).
(a) Mnemonic characteristics. Eleven items derived from
the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire
modified by Shi and Brown (2016) to measure
emotional intensity (As I am remembering the event,
my emotions are very intense; At the time of this
event, the emotions that I was feeling were very
intense), importance (I consider this event to be a sig-
nificant part of my life story), vividness (My memory for
this event is clear), transitional impact (This event has
changed my external material circumstances; This
event has impacted me psychologically), self-relevance
(This event reflects past personal motivations or goals;
This event tells a lot about who I am), emotional
valence (This event was a positive/negative emotional
experience for me), and distinctiveness (This event was
a unique experience in my life). The score of emotional
valence was computed by subtracting the score of
negative emotion from the score of positive emotion.
(b) Motivation to transmit an event. Items included: I want
my child to know that I have experienced this event; I
often talk about this event with my child; and I feel
motivated to tell my child about my experiences in
this event. The mean of the three items was used as
an index of participant’s motivation to transmit an
event (Cronbach α=.91).
(c) Perceived social desirability of an event. Items included:
This event is favoured by people in general in my
society; This event is regarded as a positive event in
my culture; This event is regarded as an important
event by people in general in my culture; The society
I live in encourages conversation on this event; and,
4 X. GU ET AL.

Table 1. Frequencies (percentages) of important events reported by parents and their children.
Category of event memory Parent-reported personally important events Child-reported important parental events
*Death of close family members 69 (10.28%) 40 (10.20%)
*Children’s birth 41 (6.11%) 21 (5.36%)
*Cultural Revolution 36 (5.37%) 9 (2.30%)
*Marriage 36 (5.37%) 27 (6.89%)
*Retirement 35 (5.22%) 16 (4.08%)
*Beginning school 34 (5.07%) 3 (0.77%)
*Job change 32 (4.77%) 19 (4.85%)
*Children’s marriage 28 (4.17%) 13 (3.32%)
*Move to another community 27 (4.02%) 12 (3.06%)
*Serious illness 27 (4.02%) 22 (5.61%)
Rustication and related experience 27 (4.02%) 29 (7.40%)
*Children’s starting university 25 (3.73%) 3 (0.77%)
*Grandchildren’s birth 22 (3.28%) 15 (3.83%)
*First job 21 (3.13%) 9 (2.30%)
*Important trip 20 (2.98%) 9 (2.30%)
Return to city after rustication 19 (2.83%) 9 (2.30%)
*Move to another city 18 (2.68%) 7 (1.79%)
*Starting university 15 (2.24%) 1 (0.26%)
*Change in health of family members 15 (2.24%) 5 (1.28%)
*Purchase of a significant object (e.g., a house) 13 (1.94%) 10 (2.55%)
*Political activities (e.g., joining the Party) 12 (1.79%) 4 (1.02%)
*Award/Outstanding personal achievement 11 (1.64%) 9 (2.30%)
*Children’s accomplishment 11 (1.64%) 9 (2.30%)
*Unemployment 11 (1.64%) 8 (2.04%)
*Lawsuit/ Being victim of a criminal assault 8 (1.19%) 1 (0.26%)
*Important hobby 5 (0.75%) 5 (1.28%)
*Remarriage 5 (0.75%) 1 (0.26%)
*Divorce 4 (0.60%) 3 (0.77%)
*Losing object of value 4 (0.60%) –
June Fourth Incident 4 (0.60%) 4 (1.02%)
*Conflict with family members 3 (0.45%) 7 (1.79%)
*Religion 3 (0.45%) –
Spouse’s move to another city 3 (0.45%) –
*Military service 2 (0.30%) 3 (0.77%)
Filial piety (e.g., taking care of parents) 2 (0.30%) 6 (1.53%)
Other public events 6 (0.89%) 8 (2.04%)
Other 17 (2.53%) 45 (11.48%)
Total 671 (100%) 392 (100%)
Notes: 1. The event categories marked with an asterisk * represent the 30 pre-existing events provided in the menu. The other categories without asterisk
represent the newly coded events that were mentioned by at least three parents or children. 2. Some parents reported rustication as their first job; in the
case, rustication was coded instead of first job. 3. The event categories are listed in descending order according to the frequency of parent-reported per-
sonally important events.

Average people in my culture would like to talk about
this event. The mean of the five items was used as an
index of the perceived desirableness of an event
(Cronbach α=.85).
Phase 3 provided information about the overall richness
and frequency of parent-child interaction. The degree of
subjective closeness was measured by Inclusion of Other
in the Self Scale (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992), a one-
item measure showing seven degrees of overlap
between two circles labelled “self” and “my child”. In
addition, these individuals reported the frequency of com-
munication with their children (1 = never, 3 = several
times a year, 5 = once a week, 7 = every day; adapted
from Neyer & Lang, 2003), and they rated the degree to
which they received support from children (1 = never, 7 =
very often; adapted from Neyer & Lang, 2003). Items
used to measure received support included: “How often
do you entrust child with personal concerns?”; “How
often are you encouraged by child, for example, in case
of feeling sad?”; “How often do you receive social
support from child, for example, in case of illness?”; and,
“How often do you receive instrumental support from
child?”. The mean of the four items was used as an index
of the support an older adult received from child (Cron-
bach α = .62). Finally, these older individuals were asked
whether they experienced rustication during the Cultural
Revolution, and, if they did, they indicated the duration
of their rusticated experience.
Child’s task
For the adult children, the online questionnaire was self-
paced and consisted of two phases. During Phase 1, partici-
pants input the descriptions of up to 10 most important
events they recalled from the parent’s life (adapted from
Svob & Brown, 2012; Svob et al., 2016). The events could
be from any period, from the time when the parent was
born up to the present, and did not have to be recollected
in any particular order. There were two restrictions: partici-
pants were instructed to exclude the parent’s birth and
their own birth (unless there was something distinct

about their own birth) among the set of the important
events.
During Phase 2, participants saw the memories they
recalled and input again, presented one at a time, in a ran-
domised order. They first dated each memory (to the year).
Then, they rated its emotional valence, importance, and
transitional impact, from their parent’s perspective and
from their own perspective (1 = completely disagree; 5 =
completely agree). They also reported the degree to
which they knew the details of each event (1 = not at all;
5 = extremely). Finally, participants rated the degree to
which each event was related to the Cultural Revolution
(1 = not at all; 5 = completely).
Coding
As parents checked the events they had experienced from
a menu of important events, their autobiographical events
were first coded in accordance with the 30 pre-existing
event categories in the menu (see Table 1). When asked
whether they had experienced “moving to another city”,
some parents mentioned their return back to city after
the rustication movement due to the Cultural Revolution.
In Table 1, we separately displayed “return to city after rus-
tication” as it related to the public event. Then, the parent-
reported event memories were classified in an open-ended
manner that was not restricted to the existing categories. In
addition to the 30 categories, we retained categories
reported by at least three parents and folded all other
memories into an “other” category. Overall, the 43
parents recalled 761 specific, one-time events1 (M = 17.70
memories per parent, SD = 3.18) and 5 general or reoccur-
ring events.
Children’s memories about important parental events
were first mapped into the 30 menu-listed categories. In
a procedure identical to the one used to classify parents’
memories, the events recalled by the children were
assigned to an open-ended set of categories. Again, a cat-
egory was retained when three or more children made
use of it; all the other memories were folded into an
“other” category. Children’s memories were also coded
for specificity (e.g., Pillemer, Steiner, Kuwabara, Thomsen,
& Svob, 2015). Memories were coded as specific if they
contained a reference to a one-time event that occurred
on a specific day. Memories were coded as general if chil-
dren reported the events happened over the course of a
life period, if the memories contained a non-specific
description of events or feelings, or if the memories
referred to a series of repeated events. Examples of the
general memories that children recalled included watch-
ing the news every day, living a poor life in childhood,
an optimistic man, or worrying about granddaughter. A
researcher first coded the children’s memories for
content and specificity. Then, a second coder indepen-
dently coded randomly selected 30% of the memories
(i.e., memories of 13 children). Inter-rater agreement was
96.9% for content and 99.2% for specificity. The procedure
MEMORY 5
resulted in 392 specific memories (M = 9.12 memories per
child; SD = 1.20) and 38 general memories. The general
memories were not mentioned by parents and were dis-
carded from the analyses.
Analysis plan
We note that the event-menu method we used in parent’s
task is capable of eliciting both important and unimportant
events. However, children recalled only important events
from their parents’ lives. Thus, to compare the two event
sets, we retained only those memories that were con-
sidered important (i.e., received an importance rating of 4
or 5) by a parent. This reduced the number of parents’
memories to 671 important events (M = 15.60 events per
parent, SD = 3.67). When reporting the properties of con-
sensus events, we analysed the personally important
events recalled by parents (N = 671) and the important par-
ental events recalled by children (N = 392).
To test our predictions, we compared the mnemonic
characteristics of consensus events and parent-only or
child-only events, the mnemonic characteristics of
parent-reported script-consistent and script-divergent con-
sensus events, and the mnemonic characteristics of child-
reported events related to the Cultural Revolution and
unrelated to it. Because of the repeated measurements
made on each participant and the unequal number of
events recalled by each participant, we performed linear
mixed-effects (LME) models with correlated residual
errors and by restricted maximum likelihood method.
Fitting LME models permitted us to make legitimate
comparisons.
Results and discussion
This section is divided into five subsections to address the
predictions developed in the introduction. In the first and
second subsections, we characterised the memories of
consensus events and compared them with important
parent-only or child-only events. In the third subsection,
we examined how parent-child interaction affected the
transmission of script-consistent or script-divergent
events from parents to children, and in the fourth, we ana-
lysed the temporal distribution of consensus, parent-only,
and child-only memories across the life span. Finally, we
focused on parents’ memories for the Cultural Revolution
and compared the ways in which children remembered
the parental events that related to the Cultural Revolution
and those that did not relate to it.
Consensus memories between parents and children
We first identified what events in a parent’s life would
receive a high rating of importance from both parents
and children, i.e., the consensus memories between
parents and children. Parents and children reported 255
consensus events in total, accounting for 38.0% and
6 X. GU ET AL.

Table 2. Parent-child correlation for the characteristics of the consensus memories (N = 255).
Child’s rating
Parent’s rating Importance Material change Psychological change Emotional valence Emotional intensity
Importance .11 .13* .14* .02 .05
Material change .14* .13* .12 .03 .10
Psychological change .08 .05 .08 −.08 .14*
Emotional valence .02 .05 −.02 .75** −.20**
Emotional intensity .16** −.01 .09 −.004 .16**

65.1% of the important events reported by parents and
children, respectively. The 10 most commonly consensus
events recalled by children were death of a close family
member (12.9%), rustication (9.4%), marriage (7.8%), chil-
dren’s birth (7.8%), grandchildren’s birth (5.5%), job
change (5.5%), retirement (5.5%), children’s marriage
(4.3%), move to another community (4.3%), and serious
illness (3.9%). The parent-child correlation for the charac-
teristics of the consensus memories ranged from .11 to
.75 with the average score .25 (see Table 2).
According to a Chinese life script reported by Scherman,
Salgado, Shao,, and Berntsen (2017), we coded the follow-
ing 11 events as script-consistent: death of close family
members, children’s birth, marriage, retirement, beginning
school, serious illness, first job, starting university, purchase
of a significant object, important hobby, and filial piety.
These script-consistent events accounted for 43.5% of the
consensus memories reported by parents and 44.3% of
the consensus memories reported by children. The rest
of the consensus events were considered as script-diver-
gent because they are relatively uncommon and/or tem-
porally unpredictable (e.g., relocation, job change).
consensus memories brought about more material
change, b = .33, SE = .09, p < .001, 95% CI [.15, .51] and
more psychological change, b = .21, SE = .08, p = .014,
95% CI [.04, .37], than parent-only memories. In addition,
they were more relevant to the self, b = .19, SE = .08, p
= .020, 95% CI [.03, .35], more distinctive, b = .17, SE = .06,
p = .003, 95% CI [.06, .29], and somewhat more emotionally
negative, b=-.41, SE = .21, p = .049, 95% CI [-.83, -.001].
Other mnemonic characteristics (i.e., importance,2
emotional intensity, and vividness) did not differ
between consensus and parent-only memories (ps > .05),
nor did parents’ motivation to transmit events or their per-
ceived social desirableness of events (ps > .05).
Similarly, we compared the characteristics of consensus
events with those of child-only events in terms of children’s
ratings. The LME analyses showed that consensus events
were more important than child-only events, b = .20, SE
= .07, p = .003, 95% CI [.07, .34], had a higher degree of
material impact, b = .36, SE = .09, p < .001, 95% CI [.18,
.54], and were more emotionally positive, b = .81, SE = .27,
p = .003, 95% CI [.28, 1.34]. The two types of events elicited
similar ratings of psychological change, emotional inten-
sity, and knowledge of details, ps > .05 (see Table 3).

Characteristics of consensus, parent-only, and

child-only memories
We compared the characteristics of consensus events with
those of parent-only events in terms of parents’ ratings (see
Table 3). In the LME model, event type (coded as consensus
events = − 1 and parent-only or child-only events = 1) was
used as the fixed factor and each mnemonic characteristic
was used as the dependent variable. As predicted,
Transmission of script-consistent and script-
divergent events from parents to children
Above we predicted that more effort would be required to
transfer script-divergent events from one generation to the
next than to transfer script-consistent events. We
approached this issue in two ways. First, we compared
how successfully transmitted script-consistent and script-

Table 3. Mean (standard deviation) ratings of the consensus, parent-only, and child-only events.
Child-reported important parental
Parent-reported personally important events events
consensus parent-only Consensus child-only
Importance 4.50 (.50) 4.46 (.50) 3.97 (.76) 3.64 (.82)**
Material change 4.01 (1.05) 3.62 (1.27)*** 3.42 (.99) 3.03 (.92)***
Psychological change 4.07 (.96) 3.84 (1.11)* 3.36 (.94) 3.25 (.89)
Emotional valence .78 (2.76) 1.26 (2.64) † .77 (2.56) .03 (2.45)**
Emotional intensity 4.08 (.79) 4.05 (.81) 3.19 (1.22) 3.25 (1.07)
Self-relevance 3.47 (1.02) 3.28 (1.16)* NA NA
Distinctiveness 4.45 (.66) 4.25 (.87)** NA NA
Vividness 4.52 (.60) 4.44 (.70) NA NA
Motivation to transmit 3.56 (1.22) 3.53 (1.20) NA NA
Perceived social desirableness 3.48 (.89) 3.54 (.98) NA NA
Knowledge of details NA NA 3.42 (1.22) 3.35 (1.13)
Note: NA indicates the variables were not measured in parents or children.
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001, †p = 0.05.

Table 4. Mean (standard deviation) ratings of the script-divergent and
script-consistent consensus events reported by parents.
Script-divergent Script-consistent
consensus events consensus events
Importance 4.48 (.50) 4.52 (.50)
Material change 4.15 (1.01) 3.83 (1.09)***
Psychological change 4.14 (.97) 3.99 (.94)
Emotional valence 1.17 (2.56) .28 (2.93)*
Emotional intensity 4.13 (.73) 4.01 (.86)
Self-relevance 3.63 (.95) 3.27 (1.06)*
Distinctiveness 4.49 (.64) 4.41 (.69)
Vividness 4.54 (.58) 4.50 (.63)
Motivation to transmit 3.87 (1.22) 3.16 (1.11)***
Perceived social 3.57 (.85) 3.37 (.93)
desirableness
*p < .05, ***p < .001.
divergent events differ in terms of intention-to-transmit
ratings and other mnemonic characteristics. Table 4
shows the descriptive of the events. In the LME model,
whether the events were recorded in the life script or not
(coded as script-divergent events = − 1 and script-consist-
ent events = 1) was used as a fixed factor and each mne-
monic characteristic was used as the dependent variable.
The LME analyses indicated that the script-divergent con-
sensus events (N = 144) received higher ratings from
parents than the script-consistent consensus events (N =
111) in material change, b = .35, SE = .13, p = .007, 95% CI
[.09, .61]; emotional valence, b = .73, SE = .34, p = .035,
95% CI [.05, 1.40]; self-relevance, b = .30, SE = .12, p = .011,
95% CI [.07, .54]; and motivation to transmit, b = .74, SE
= .14, p < .001, 95% CI [.47, 1.01]. The two types of events
received comparable ratings from parents in other charac-
teristics, ps > .05. These findings supported our prediction
that parents displayed stronger motivation for script-diver-
gent events to be effectively transmitted to and remem-
bered by children than script-consistent events and also
suggested that script-divergent events may need to
surpass script-consistent events in some characteristics,
such as material change and self-relevance, in order to
be passed down to the next generation.
Second, we examined how the quality of parent-child
interaction affected the hit rates (i.e., consensus ratio
scores) of script-consistent events and script-divergent
events. Parent’s hit rate of script-consistent events equals
the number of script-consistent consensus events divided
by the total number of script-consistent events. Parent’s
hit rate of script-divergent events equals the number of
script-divergent consensus events divided by the total
number of script-divergent events. Child’s hit rates of
script-consistent events and script-divergent events were
calculated in the same way by using the number of
events reported by children. Linear regression analyses
were conducted with the hit rates of script-consistent
events and script-divergent events reported by parent or
child as the dependent variables separately in each
model. As the number of important events reported by
each parent or child varied, they were entered in the first
level of regression models as control variables. The
quality of parent-child interaction, i.e., parent’s subjective
MEMORY 7
closeness to children, frequency of communication with
children, and received support from children, entered in
the second level of the models as predictor variables.
Results showed that parent-child interaction predicted
parent’s hit rate of script-divergent events, adjusted
R 2 = .25, ΔR 2 = .16, p = .045; F(5,42) = 3.82, p = .007, MSE
= .11; specifically, parent’s subjective closeness to children
was significant, standard β = .38, p = .016, and the other
two variables were not significant, ps > .05. Parent-child
interaction also affected child’s hit rate of script-divergent
events, adjusted R 2 = .27, ΔR 2 = .17, p = .031; F(5,42) = 4.02,
p = .005, MSE = .11; Specifically, parent’s subjective close-
ness to children was significant as well, standard β = .41,
p = .009, and the other two variables were not significant
either, ps > .05. By contrast, the hit rate of script-consistent
events was not influenced by parent-child interaction, ps
> .05. As predicted, the number of script-consistent
events that parents passed onto children did not depend
on the quality of intergenerational interaction. The
quality of intergenerational interaction, particularly the
parent’s subjective closeness to children, serves as an
important factor in determining how many script-diver-
gent events in the life story of parents can be transmitted
to their children.
Temporal distribution of consensus and child-only
memories
Figure 1 illustrates the temporal distribution of consensus
memories and the memories reported only by parents or
only by children. The panels in the first and second rows
contain the distribution of consensus events reported by
parents and by children, respectively; the panels in the
third and fourth rows contain the distribution of parent-
only and child-only events, respectively. As seen in the
figure, the distribution of consensus events recalled by
parents was almost identical to that recalled by children,
but the temporal distribution of parent- and child-only
events were very different from each other and from the
consensus distribution.
Moreover, the distribution of consensus memories
recalled by children formed a bump during the formative
years (i.e., 16–35), years typically associated with the remi-
niscence bump. As predicted, children recalled more child-
only memories from the 36–55-year period (65/96, 67.7%)
than the 16–35-year period (31/96, 32.3%), χ 2(1) = 12.04,
p = .001. They also recalled more consensus memories
(100/131, 76.3%) than child-only memories (31/131,
23.7%) from the reminiscence bump period, χ 2(1) = 36.34,
p < .001. These findings indicate that when children
recalled the important events from a parent’s life, a large
portion of consensus memories occurred during the
parent’s adolescence and young adulthood. In contrast, a
large portion of child-only memories occurred later in the
parent’s life revealing an egocentric bias.
To examine how script-consistent events contribute to
the bump of consensus memories recalled by children,
8 X. GU ET AL.

Figure 1. Temporal distribution of consensus memories, parent-only memories, and child-only memories.

we compared the number of script-consistent and script-
divergent events in the bump period. For the consensus
memories, there were more script-consistent events in
the reminiscence bump period (54/81, 66.7%) than in the
adjacent 36–55-year period (27/81, 33.3%), χ 2(1) = 9.00, p
= .003. For the child-only memories, more script-divergent
events were recalled in the 36–55-year period (43/63,
68.3%) than in the reminiscence bump period (20/63,
31.7%), χ 2(1) = 8.40, p = .004. Thus, the consensus events
children remembered from a parent’s life contain many
script-consistent events that contribute to a reminiscence
bump.
Historical memories in parents and children
In this section, we focused on the particular historical
event, Cultural Revolution, which all the parents lived
through. Twenty-six (i.e., 60%) parents were rusticated
 MEMORY 9

Table 5. Mean (standard deviation) ratings of the Cultural Revolution in
rusticated and non-rusticated older adults.
Rusticated older Non-rusticated older
adults
Importance 4.46 (.76)
Material change 4.50 (.65)
Psychological change 4.54 (.65)
Emotional valence −1.23 (2.44)
Emotional intensity 3.98 (.85)
Self-relevance 3.23 (1.06)
Distinctiveness 4.38 (.94)
Vividness 4.54 (.51)
Motivation to transmit 3.33 (1.20)
Perceived social 3.18 (.71)
desirableness
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
and their average duration of rustication was 6.04 years
(SD = 2.65). Rusticated and non-rusticated parents did not
display any difference in age, years of residence in
Beijing, years of education, or child’s age, ps > .10. The
two groups remembered this historical event in different
ways (see Table 5). As predicted, the rusticated group con-
sidered the Cultural Revolution as a more important part of
their life than the non-rusticated group, t(41) = 2.55, p
= .015, Cohen’s d = .77, 95% CI [.15, 1.25]. They also
reported that the Revolution has changed their external
circumstances to a greater extent, t(41) = 4.62, p < .001,
Cohen’s d = 1.33, 95% CI [.84, 2.16]; and impacted them
more psychologically, t(41) = 2.75, p = .009, Cohen’s d
= .81, 95% CI [.20, 1.34]. These findings are consistent
with Gu et al. (2017). In addition, rusticated individuals
were more inclined to believe that the Revolution
affected their personal goals and explained something
about who they were, t(41) = 2.42, p = .020, Cohen’s d
= .75, 95% CI [.14, 1.50]. They also were more likely to
believe that the average person in China regarded the Cul-
tural Revolution as important and would like to talk about
it, t(41) = 2.93, p = .006, Cohen’s d = .90, 95% CI [.20, 1.11].
The findings provide evidence for the notion that the rus-
ticated adults have a strong sense of belonging to a
specific generation (Halbwachs, 1992; Tessler, Konold, &
Reif, 2004), which in turn may trigger a desire to shared
memories (Bonnin, 2016).
The historical memories children retained from a
parent’s experience were identified using the scale item
regarding each parental event’s relation to the Cultural
adults
Revolution. Response of 4 or 5 (on a 5-point scale) consti-
3.76 (1.03)*
3.00 (1.46)*** tuted a Revolution-related event, whereas the response
3.76 (1.20)** of 3 or less was considered to be Revolution-unrelated.
−1.12 (2.18) As predicted, children of rusticated parents recalled more
3.76 (.59)
2.41 (1.12)* Revolution-related events (62/80, 77.5%) than children of
4.24 (.56) non-rusticated parents (18/80, 22.5%), χ 2(1) = 24.20, p
4.24 (.66) < .001. This suggests that Revolution-related memories
3.31 (1.02)
2.53 (.73)** were transmitted across generations in accordance with
the impact that the Revolution had on the older
generation.
To further compare the characteristics of historical
memories, we fitted LME models with event relatedness
(coded as Revolution-related = 1 and Revolution-unrelated
= − 1), parent’s rustication status (coded as children of rus-
ticated parents = 1 and children of non-rusticated parents
= −1), and their interaction as fixed factors. Each mnemo-
nic characteristic was used as the dependent variable in
each model. Results showed that the main effects of
event relatedness on material change and knowledge of
details were significant (see Table 6). Specifically, events
related to the Cultural Revolution were considered to
produce more change in material circumstances, b =
− .33, SE = .14, p = .017, 95% CI [−.59, −.06]. Nonetheless,
children claimed to have known less about events
related to the Revolution than events that were not, b
= .41, SE = .17, p = .018, 95% CI [.07, .75]. The main effects
of event relatedness on other mnemonic characteristics,
the main effects of parent’s rustication status, or the
effects of interaction were not reliable, all ps > .10.
When taking a close look at the transmission of histori-
cal knowledge via autobiographical memory, two main
findings emerged. First, children of rusticated parents
retained more history-based memories from a parent’s
life than children of non-rusticated parents. Second, the
Revolution-related events that children recalled from a
parent’s life have brought about more material change
than the Revolution-unrelated events. The findings are in
line with those reported by Svob and colleagues (Svob &
Brown, 2012; Svob et al., 2016). These researchers found

Table 6. Mean (standard deviation) ratings of important parental memories, as a function of relatedness to the Cultural Revolution and a function of parental
rustication status.
Child-reported important parental events Children of rusticated parents Children of non-rusticated parents
Importance Revolution-related 3.97 (.77) 3.97 (.72)
Revolution-unrelated 3.87 (.76) 3.76 (.85)
Material change* Revolution-related 3.65 (1.03) 3.39 (1.04)
Revolution-unrelated 3.25 (1.00) 3.15 (.91)
Psychological change Revolution-related 3.52 (.90) 3.44 (.86)
Revolution-unrelated 3.35 (.94) 3.18 (.92)
Emotional valence Revolution-related .29 (2.58) .47 (2.40)
Revolution-unrelated .70 (2.37) .38 (2.77)
Emotional intensity Revolution-related 3.15 (1.17) 3.06 (1.00)
Revolution-unrelated 3.31 (1.13) 3.13 (1.24)
Knowledge of details* Revolution-related 3.19 (1.08) 3.00 (1.24)
Revolution-unrelated 3.48 (1.13) 3.43 (1.29)
*Main effect of event relatedness, p < .05.
10 X. GU ET AL.
that children whose parents lived in regions that were dev-
astated by the war recalled war-related events from
parent’s life story more frequently than children whose
parents lived in regions that were less affected. War-
related events changed parent’s material circumstance to
a greater degree than war-unrelated events. The current
findings together with previous one highlight the signifi-
cance of a material change in modulating how memories
are transmitted from parents to children.
General discussion
This study is the first that we know of to examine the
factors that modulate the transmission of autobiographical
memories from older to younger generations. We found
that for both parents and children, the consensus mem-
ories were characterised by a high material change that
the events had brought about in their lives. Compared
with parent-only events, the consensus events engendered
more material and psychological change, related more to
the self, and were more unique; whereas for children, the
consensus events were considered to have been more
important, more emotionally positive, and to have
brought about more material change than child-only
events. The significant effect of transitional impact
extends the transition theory (Brown, 2016) to provide an
account for the intergenerational transmission of autobio-
graphical memories. Material change affects not only how
autobiographical memory are structured (Brown, 2016; Gu
et al., 2017), but also whether the memories are likely to be
passed on from one generation to the next. For example, in
a study that examined the transmission of the memories of
World War II in five Belgian families, researchers found that
personal, war-relevant memories of the oldest generation
sometimes were transmitted to the middle generation
but rarely transmitted to the youngest (Stone, van der
Haegen, Luminet, & Hirst, 2014). Based on the transition
theory account, this might be due to the descending
change that the public event produced from the oldest
generation to the middle and the youngest generations,
which leads to memory loss during the process of interge-
nerational transmission.
Our results also suggest that different mechanisms are
involved in the transmission of script-consistent and
script-divergent events across generations. For the consen-
sus memories, script-divergent events scored higher than
script-consistent events in mnemonic characteristics like
material change, emotional intensity, and self-relevance.
Script-divergent events also reflected more motivation of
parents to pass on the events than script-consistent
events. In addition, we found that parent’s subjective close-
ness to their children influenced the ratio of script-diver-
gent consensus events conveyed from parent to child,
but not the ratio of script-consistent consensus events.
These data also provided evidence consistent, to some
extent, with the cultural life-script theory. This theory
defines the life script as widely shared knowledge in a
culture about the important temporally normative life tran-
sitions that are likely to occur in a prototypical life (e.g.,
Berntsen & Rubin, 2004; Scherman et al., 2017). On this
view, script-consistent events are transmitted across gener-
ations in a manner relatively independent of the quality of
parent-child relationship. In contrast, the idiosyncratic
script-divergent events conform to the rule of direct verti-
cal socialisation inside the family (Bisin & Verdier, 2000).
That is, for children to copy parents’ memories and atti-
tudes about script-divergent events, parents need to be
motivated to pass the experiences down and exert effort
in communicating with children. In addition to parent’s
direct influence, children can learn about their parents’ atti-
tudes and experiences through socialisation outside the
family (Bisin & Verdier, 2000), such as learning from the pre-
vailing attitudes in the region of residence and surround-
ing environment (Wang & Song, 2018). The process of
socialisation outside the family also supports the above
findings and suggests that children might access the
script-consistent events in a way that is relatively indepen-
dent of parent-child interaction.
The present study tapped into the intergenerational
transmission mainly by examining consensus events and
comparing them with parent-only and child-only events.
The consensus events represent a collection of parents’
autobiographical events that were successfully transmitted
to children. In contrast, those events reported by only a
parent or only a child provide insight into the complexity
of the transmitting process. The existence of parent-only
important events may occur because the parent chose
not to transmit the events, because the child failed to
encode them as important, or because the events were
simply forgotten. It is also possible that children did not
consider the events as important as parents did, or children
did not have access to the events at the time of the test
(Hirst & Coman, 2018; Stone & Hirst, 2014). Clearly, more
research will be necessary to determine which of these pos-
sibilities best explains the failed transmission and/or recol-
lection of the most important events from a parent’s life.
We assumed that the information about the events in a
parent’s life is passed on from parent to child. This
approach conforms to the classical source-recipient
model, which depicts the transmission process as a uni-
directional series of stages from a source (i.e., the parent)
to a recipient (i.e., the child; Shannon & Weaver, 1949). In
comparison to the single-direction model, a reciprocal
model emphasises the mutual information exchange
between a source and a recipient. The mutual exchange
model has been applied to examine research questions
like whether sharing autobiographical events between
strangers would promote closeness (e.g., Beike, Brandon,
& Cole, 2016), and whether remembering together in a
group would influence performance (e.g., collaborative
remembering; Harris, Barnier, & Sutton, 2013). The single-
direction model provided a useful starting point for exam-
ining the parent-to-child transmission of autobiographical
memories. However, it is certainly possible that children

can affect parents’ transmitting behaviours and outcomes
(e.g., Tabuchi & Miura, 2016). For example, if children
often show indifferent to a parental event, parents may
lower the level of motivation to talk about it to children.
In that situation, there are two possible outcomes: first,
the parental event may be inaccessible when children
retrieve memories about a parent’s life; second, the par-
ental event is still retained by children, but the mnemonic
quality of the event declines in children. We believe that
future research should be extended to examine the
mutual influences between parents and children in the
transmission of memory.
Before concluding our study, it is important to note its
potential limitations. We explored the intergenerational
transmission issues in Chinese dyads of older adults and
their middle-aged children. It awaits further study to
examine whether these findings would hold up across cul-
tures. In addition, future researchers may explore and use
other methods to elicit memories from parents and chil-
dren. As the current method, children recalled 10 impor-
tant parental events. This leaves open the possibility that
some important events were missed and conversely that
not all of the events reported were considered that impor-
tant by the children. It might be interesting to let parents
and children to freely narrate parental life stories and
compare them.
In conclusion, this study revealed that, in response to
our two research questions, (a) when parents’ autobiogra-
phical memories of important events were transmitted to
their children, parents and children agreed that the con-
sensus events brought about a large material change. (b)
Compared with the script-consistent events transmitted
from parents to children, the script-divergent events
required stronger parents’ motivation to pass on and
they were transmitted more when parents felt closer to
their children. These findings about the factors that modu-
late the intergenerational transmission of memories con-
tribute to the intergenerational study and shed light on
the process of how shared memories are formed in a
family.
Notes
1. The total numbers of listed events and extra events were 701
and 60, respectively. On average, each parent recalled 16.30
listed events (range 10–22, SD = 3.04) and 1.40 extra events
(range 0–4, SD = 1.05).
2. The close ratings of importance between consensus memories
reported by parents and parent-only memories may reflect the
range restriction as all unimportant events (i.e., events rated 4
or lower in the importance scale) were eliminated. Due to a
range restriction, parents’ ratings and children’s ratings of con-
sensus memories did not correlate as shown in Table 2.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
MEMORY 11
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