SELF WRITTEN EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

Abstract

Early recollections (ERs) have been studied by psychologists since the beginning of the twentieth century. The literature suggests that early recollections are a highly usable means for understanding an individual and interactions between individuals. Alfred Adler and others propose that early memories reflect a person's cognitive map of the world and are in fact a prototype of the individual's fundamental attitudes. The memories indicate then what a person has chosen to remember or construct from the past to support or justify present beliefs and behavior choices. They offer the helping professional useful and easily obtainable clues to personality assessment. The potent potential of this tool may be limited by the fact that it is typically used in an interview setting, and is therefore bound by the constraints of that setting. A self administered form for collecting early recollections could overcome these constraints and save time and money and could thus extend the use and benefits of the tool in counseling, education, and research settings. The plausibility of such a procedure was tested in this study by developing a written instrument, Form E-the fifth in a series tested in pilot studies-which was then tested for equivalence with the product of the traditional, interview-based, oral method of ER data collection. Judges working within an experimental design compared the ERs collected via the two strategies. ERs taken via interview and by the written form, each by two judges, were compared in a blind design by two other judges, oral with oral, written with written, and oral with written. Analyses of the data showed no differences between the ERs gathered by different judges within strategy or between strategies, leading to the conclusion that the written instrument, Form E, is as reliable as the oral format, and, using the oral format ERs as criterion, that Form E produced valid ERs.