Alea & Vick 2010 - The first sight of love https://www.researchgate.net/publicat

Question

Alea & Vick 2010 - The first sight of love https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45709791_The_first_sight_of_love_Relationship-defining_memories_and_marital_satisfaction_across_adulthood

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1. List the three most important aspects of the article, justifying your responses.

2. Identify two aspects of the reading that you don't understand. Briefly discuss (in two or three sentences for each aspect) why these two aspects interfered with your general understanding of the reading.

3. Pose a question to the article's author that goes beyond the reading content and does not reflect the issues you raised in Question 2

Explanation / Answer

1. Ever since the publication of “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” by Charles Darwin in 1859, many theories have been put forward regarding the reasons as to why animals and humans are different.(1) Whilst there was an initial tendency to focus on the differences apparent in the main anatomic characteristics of the human body, in more recent time research has concentrated on differences that are evident both in the anatomy and in that of the workings of the human brain. (2) While in the past, the essence of the human being was placed on the pelvic structure, the creation of tools or even the intermaxillary bone, the introduction of new technology and cerebral imaging is enabling us to glean previously unthinkable information regarding the evolution of specific structures and parts of the brain. (3)All these discoveries can be associated with new theories based on a better understanding of the workings of the human mind. Hence, as a result of an enormous joint effort, a comprehensible description of the cause of the origin of mankind is emerging. This allows “love”, once considered as merely a simple emotion, to be at the very core of explaining the evolutionary characteristics of the human being.Relationship-defining memories that were more vivid, positive, emotionally intense, and rehearsed related to higher marital satisfaction.

2. i) Age and gender differences were minimal - Age and gender differences were examined concerning the nature (types of objects considered special), meaning (person/nonperson, past, present, and future associations), and function (emotional, social, identity development, and play) of cherished possessions. One hundred twenty subjects in six age categories (6, 9, 11, 14, 16, and 18 years), with 10 males and 10 females comprising each age group, were interviewed. Results indicated significant age, gender, and age by gender interactions. For example, younger children were egocentric in the meanings assigned to their cherished possessions, while older children held social relationships meaningful; females favored items to be contemplated while males favored action items; possessions which were meaningful for the "enjoyment" they provided decreased after age 6 years in females, but persisted in males throughout the ages studied. The findings have theoretical implications for cognitive, emotional, and social development from childhood through adolescence.

ii) Results are discussed in the context of the adaptive social function of autobiographical memories -

Autobiographical memory is not merely declarative and episodic in nature. It also entails explicit self-reference, chronological organization, and causal relations. It entails conscious recollection, in terms of remembering, knowing, feeling, or believing. Its functions may be agentic or nonagentic, but all are assigned, not intrinsic, and thus are observer-relative features of reality. Questions about function risk committing the adaptationist fallacy. Viewed intrapersonally, autobiographical memory is a critical component in the mental representation of self. Viewed interpersonally, autobiographical memory provides a basis for establishing and maintaining social relationships. Autobiographical memory is an individual right, and it may also be an ethical obligation. The popularity of the memoir as a literary genre indicates that it can also be a means of making money. In a future world of artificial minds with infinite capacity for data storage, there still will be no substitute for the human capacity to remember what really matters and forget what does not.Alea and Bluck underscore the social function of autobiographical memory in their survey of the uses to which people put autobiographical memory (Alea & Bluck, 2003). Both younger and older adults, and men and women alike, reported thinking about the past, and talking about the past, in order to maintain social bonds. And, in fact, the social functions of autobiographical memory introducing oneself, developing a closer relationship, strengthening a friendship, finding out what another person is like, helping someone, or getting help seem to outshine the action-directive and self-defining functions. When we enter into an intimate relationship with another person, in a very real sense their autobiographical memories become our own, and vice versa. And if the relationship ends, there typically ensues a kind of anterograde amnesia for what the other has been doing since the breakup and, perhaps, a retrograde amnesia as well.

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