Newsman\u27s Address

Reminiscing over the previous year and wishes for the futurehttps://egrove.olemiss.edu/kgbsides_uk/1323/thumbnail.jp

Parental Co‐Construction of 5‐ to 13‐Year‐Olds\u27 Global Self‐Esteem Through Reminiscing About Past Events

The current study explored parental processes associated with children\u27s global self‐esteem development. Eighty 5‐ to 13‐year‐olds and one of their parents provided qualitative and quantitative data through questionnaires, open‐ended questions, and a laboratory‐based reminiscing task. Parents who included more explanations of emotions when writing about the lowest points in their lives were more likely to discuss explanations of emotions experienced in negative past events with their child, which was associated with child attachment security. Attachment was associated with concurrent self‐esteem, which predicted relative increases in self‐esteem 16 months later, on average. Finally, parent support also predicted residual increases in self‐esteem. Findings extend prior research by including younger ages and uncovering a process by which two theoretically relevant parenting behaviors impact self‐esteem development

Supporting memory and identity in older people: findings from a ‘Sandpit’ process

Identity in old age is challenged by physical changes, evolving roles within the family, and life transitions such as retirement. Supporting identity is therefore important in later life, and might be assisted by media technologies which allow people to reflect on their lives, record their personal histories and share these with family, friends and caregivers. This possibility was explored in two creative ‘Sandpits’ with older people as part of the SUS-IT project, funded by the New Dynamics of Ageing programme in the UK. Discussions were held with PC and non-PC user groups of retirement age to understand memory and identity practices and elicit reactions to three novel product concepts. These included a Reminiscing Radio for life review, a Story Lamp for associating spoken stories with photographs and memorabilia, and a pair of virtual reality Travel Glasses for transporting you back to a special place in the past. The main findings of these discussions will be presented, along with concepts generated by the participants in a re-design exercise. This paper will also show how the sandpits enabled older people to be involved in the design process by allowing them to shape early design concepts through exploring their own ideas and motivations

Sonic souvenirs: exploring the paradoxes of recorded sound for family remembering

Many studies have explored social processes and technologies associated with sharing photos. In contrast, we explore the role of sound as a medium for social reminiscing. We involved 10 families in recording 'sonic souvenirs' of their holidays. They shared and discussed their collections on their return. We compared these sounds with their photo taking activities and reminiscences. Both sounds and pictures triggered active collaborative reminiscing, and attempts to capture iconic representations of events. However sounds differed from photos in that they were more varied, familial and creative. Further, they often expressed the negative or mundane in order to be 'true to life', and were harder to interpret than photos. Finally we saw little use of pure explanatory narrative. We reflect on the relations between sound and family memory and propose new designs on the basis of our findings, to better support the sharing and manipulation of social sounds

FM radio: family interplay with sonic mementos

Digital mementos are increasingly problematic, as people acquire large amounts of digital belongings that are hard to access and often forgotten. Based on fieldwork with 10 families, we designed a new type of embodied digital memento, the FM Radio. It allows families to access and play sonic mementos of their previous holidays. We describe our underlying design motivation where recordings are presented as a series of channels on an old fashioned radio. User feedback suggests that the device met our design goals: being playful and intriguing, easy to use and social. It facilitated family interaction, and allowed ready access to mementos, thus sharing many of the properties of physical mementos that we intended to trigger

On Second Thought

{Excerpt} Remembering times past stimulates the mind and helps give perspective and a sense of who we are. Social reminiscence is a gain in performance without practice. Reminiscing, be it simple, informative, or of the life review, therapeutic variety—different but overlapping types exist—is a uniquely human activity that plays a vital role. By recalling the past, celebrating accomplishments and—as necessary—coming to terms with disappointments, individuals can achieve a heightened sense of personal identity and self-continuity, notably in their social relationships. At the confluence of voluntary memory and events, circumstances, and experience, they can find meaning and coherence in life and work

Reminiscence and ageing

This paper questions assumptions about reminiscence and looks at definitions of it. Functions of different types of reminiscence are examined and distinctions are drawn between these and autobiographical memories. Methodologies of eliciting reminiscences are critically considered. Finally, types and amounts of reminiscence are related to life style and age group

The Effects of Parental Dialogic Reading and Elaborative Reminiscing on Children’s Narratives and Vocabulary

Seven mothers were taught the same language support strategies, in one of two conditions: dialogic reading or elaborative reminiscing with their child. They were also supported in using these strategies over a 6-week period. The frequency, distribution, and diversity of mothers' strategies were examined before and after the intervention, in two tasks: reading a storybook and reminiscing about a past event. Mothers were also interviewed about their experience and perceptions of dialogic reading or elaborative reminiscing. Additionally, children’s narrative and vocabulary skills were examined. Mothers in the dialogic reading condition used strategies more frequently than those in the elaborative reminiscing condition on the storybook and reminiscing tasks, as revealed by descriptive statistics. Surprisingly, mothers in the reminiscing condition used fewer strategies in the reminiscing task at posttest than at pretest. Descriptively, mothers also showed changes at posttest in their distribution of strategy types, notably greater use of WH questions during both the storybook and reminiscing tasks. All mothers increased their diversity of strategy types on the reminiscing task. Following the intervention, the children showed improvements in fictional and personal storytelling and receptive vocabulary. Expressive vocabulary and story comprehension did not show an effect. The findings suggest that dialogic reading or elaborative reminiscing, implemented by mothers, has positive effects on certain aspects of children's narrative and vocabulary skills. Nuances in mothers' strategy use across conditions and their impact on children’s language skills merit further investigation

What do people want from their lifelogs?

The practice of lifelogging potentially consists of automatically capturing and storing a digital record of every piece of information that a person (lifelogger) encounters in their daily experiences. Lifelogging has become an increasingly popular area of research in recent years. Most current lifeloggiing research focuses on techniques for data capture or processing. Current applications of lifelogging technology are usually driven by new technology inventions, creative ideas of researchers, or the special needs of a particular user group, e.g. individuals with memory impairment. To the best of our knowledge, little work has explored potential lifelogs applications from the perspective of the desires of the general public. One of the difficulties of carrying out such a study is the balancing of the information given to the subject regarding lifelog technology to enable them to generate realistic ideas without limiting or directing their imaginations by providing too much specific information. We report a study in which we take a progressive approach where we introduce lifelogging in three stages, and collect the ideas and opinions of a volunteer group of general public participants on techniques for lifelog capture, and applications and functionality