Self-defining future projections: exploring the identity function of thinking about the future.

The act of projecting oneself into meaningful future events may significantly contribute to a person's sense of self and identity. Yet if the role of memories, in particular self-defining memories (SDMs), in grounding the self is now well established, the identity function of anticipated future events has received comparatively little attention. This article introduces the construct of self-defining future projection (SDFP) to address this issue.

Further characterisation of self-defining memories in young adults: a study of a Swiss sample.

Several individual differences affecting four dimensions of self-defining memories (SDMs)--structure, content, affect, and autobiographical reasoning (Blagov & Singer, 2004; McLean & Fournier, 2008; Singer & Salovey, 1993)--have been observed in young adults (principally in North America). In this study we aimed to investigate the relationships between the different dimensions of SDMs, providing further evidence of the content validity of the Self-Defining Memory task. It was possible to discern two specific profiles from the three SDMs collected from each participant.

Geriatrics index of comorbidity was the most accurate predictor of death in geriatric hospital among six comorbidity scores.

Objectives: To compare the abilities of six validated comorbidity indices (Charlson index, cumulative illness rating scale [CIRS], index of coexistent diseases, Kaplan scale, geriatrics index of comorbidity [GIC], and chronic disease score) to predict adverse hospitalization outcomes (death during hospitalization, length of stay, and institutionalization).

Study Design And Setting: Prospective cohort of 444 elderly inpatients (mean age 85.3) was randomly selected from Geneva geriatric hospital.

Narrative identity in schizophrenia.

This study examined narrative identity in a group of 81 patients with schizophrenia and 50 healthy controls through the recall of self-defining memories. The results indicated that patients' narratives were less coherent and elaborate than those of controls. Schizophrenia patients were severely impaired in the ability to make connections with the self and extract meaning from their memories, which significantly correlated with illness duration.

Exploring self-defining memories in schizophrenia.

Previous studies have shown that patients with schizophrenia are impaired in recalling specific events from their personal past. However, the relationship between autobiographical memory impairments and disturbance of the sense of identity in schizophrenia has not been investigated in detail. In this study the authors investigated schizophrenic patients' ability to recall self-defining memories; that is, memories that play an important role in building and maintaining the self-concept.