The Effect of Immigration on the Contents and Organization of Autobiographical Memory: A Transition-Theory Perspective

When asked to recall a specific event related to the word "tree", what would a 50-year-old Chinese immigrant report? For most Chinese people of that age, the first memory that comes to mind is probably the tree-climbing experience from his/her childhood. However, for a person who moved from China to Canada and whose life has been completely changed since then, it is fairly common to report a maple-tree story that occurred in his/her first year in Canada. In this study, we demonstrate that immigration is an important transition in the Chinese immigrants' lives, and that it plays an important role in the memory for one's own past. On one hand, the immigrants tend to recall an event from the time of immigration, and on the other hand, they tend to refer to the time of immigration when estimating the date for the reported events.