Abstract:

The functional researches of autobiographical memory have been developed mainly in clinical, personality, and cognitive psychology. These researches are different from each other in their research subjects, terminology, methodology, and results. The clinical researchers concern and abstract many special functions of reminiscence of the elderly via clinical observation and administrations of Reminiscence Functions Scale. The personality psychology concerns the role of narrative in personality growth, especially the role of which in identity development, with the Coherence as an important indicator measured by various measures. Cognitive psychology emphasizes the basic functional categories and fundamental processing mechanisms of autobiographical memory. With its theoretical framework and cognitive models, researches of autobiographical memory may give us some deeper enlightenment for integration of autobiographical memory functional researches from different domains. Prospects on the experimental approach, ecological validity, life-span and cross-cultural perspective, measurement, and integration approaches are also provided.

Key words: reminiscence, narrative, autobiographical memory, functional research