Forks in the Road: Memories of Turning Points and Transitions

Summary: Turning points and transitions are both life events marked by significant change. Whereas turning points are personal changes in life direction, transitions are external changes in daily circumstances. Transition-linked turning points are events that fit both of these definitions. Although transitions and turning points have been examined separately, the current study is the first empirical comparison of these types of events and their overlap. Differences in the characteristics of adults’ autobiographical memories of turning points, transitions, and transition-linked turning points were compared using a within-subjects design. Memories of transition-linked turning points and turning points were more central to participants’ life stories than transitions, whereas memories of transitions had more similarities in content, particularly location, with related memories. These results suggest that transitions organize autobiographical memory whereas turning points anchor the life story. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. We all can identify events that we consider to be moments of significant change in our lives. Turning points can be useful in helping us develop an organized understanding of ourselves amidst the many events we experience in a lifetime. When a person says, ‘That was a real turning point for me’, it implies a certain amount of personal growth. Yet, we do not necessarily think of every change that we experience as a turning point. A person might also say, ‘I’m just going through a transitional time right now’ . W e go through many transitions in our lives that may or may not acquire the sense of meaning and growth that seems so special to turning points. Although turning points appear to be distinct from transitions, there is likely to be some overlap in how we remember and associate turning points and transitions with other events from our lives. If both turning points and transitions are marked by change, what is it that distinguishes these two types of events as we look back on our lives? To date, autobiographical memory (AM) researchers have only tangentially addressed this question. The terms ‘turning point’ and ‘transition’ are often employed to help explain the nature and organization of AM, but there has been no empirical research directly comparing memories for turning points and transitions. Moreover, when the terms ‘turning point’ and ‘transition’ are applied in the literature, they are frequently ill defined or used interchangeably. If turning points and transitions are integral to current theory and understanding of AM, an effort should be made to differentiate these terms in order to apply them more uniformly and to clarify their respective roles in AM. The current study was driven by both theoretical and empiricalresearchgoals.First,weaimedtodevisetheoretically informed operational definitions for turning points and transitions. Then, by prompting participants to recall AMs of a turning point, a transition, and a transition-linked turning point, we gathered empirical evidence forwhetheror not people couldrecall such events from their own lives, and if they could, how memories of these events might differ in phenomenology and organization with regard to other memories. TURNING POINTS Logically, there appear to be two key features of turning points corresponding to the two components of the term ‘turning point’. The first half, ‘turning’, implies changing direction. The event itself seems to trigger a shift in direction, thereby influencing the series of events that follows it, although this causal relationship may be subjective rather than objective. The second half of the term, ‘point’, implies that it is a specific moment in time or, in AM terms, a single event. Although perceived turning points may consist of several linked events within a temporally extended unit of time (e.g., college or a trip to another country), one must cite specific episodic experiences within the larger time frame in order to create causal links between the turning point and one’s current life direction. Thus, turning points may be defined as specific events that are perceived to change the direction of one’s life. Existing definitions of turning points in the theoretical