Here, we examined retrospective reports of adults’ earliest autobiographical memory, the age of this report and whether the reported age was associated with exposure to early life adversity, current anxiety and childhood attachment. Across four studies, we found that reporting a later ‘earliest’ memory was associated with higher self-reported anxiety in both American (Studies 1, 2 and 4) and Australian (Study 3) samples. Furthermore, in Studies 2–4, we found that reporting a later earliest memory uniquely predicted anxiety when controlling for number of adverse childhood events (a risk factor for the development of anxiety). In Study 4, we established that this relation is partially mediated by childhood anxious attachment. Although we consistently demonstrated that later earliest memories were associated with current anxiety, we found little evidence for a relation between reported age at the time of earliest memory and childhood adversity. We also found no evidence of gender differences in the associations of interest. These results suggest that poorer memory of early childhood is associated with greater childhood anxious attachment and anxiety in adulthood. The implications of this work are discussed in terms of the adaptive nature of autobiographical memory and the development of a coherent life narrative.

中文翻译：

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作为孩子更焦虑和焦虑依恋的成年人报告了后来的第一记忆

在这里，我们检查了成人最早的自传记忆的回顾性报告、该报告的年龄以及报告的年龄是否与早期生活逆境、当前焦虑和童年依恋有关。在四项研究中，我们发现在美国（研究 1、2 和 4）和澳大利亚（研究 3）样本中，报告较晚的“最早”记忆与较高的自我报告焦虑有关。此外，在研究 2-4 中，我们发现在控制儿童不良事件的数量（焦虑发展的一个风险因素）时，报告较晚的最早记忆可以独特地预测焦虑。在研究 4 中，我们确定这种关系部分是由童年焦虑依恋介导的。尽管我们一直证明后来最早的记忆与当前的焦虑有关，我们发现很少有证据表明最早记忆时报告的年龄与童年逆境之间存在关系。我们还没有发现感兴趣的关联中存在性别差异的证据。这些结果表明，儿童早期记忆力较差与儿童期焦虑依恋和成年期焦虑有关。这项工作的意义在自传记忆的适应性和连贯生活叙事的发展方面进行了讨论。