Research on memory of public events consistently reveals generational effects, where individuals remember best the events from their "critical years" of adolescence and early adulthood--a phenomenon attributed to privileged encoding or retrieval of memories due to primacy of experience. Prior research, however, has not decoupled the…

A study on the political consciousness of family groups in Warsaw confirms that current political events may be an important agent of political socialization. The rise of Solidarity and other events of 1980-81 influenced, in different ways, the perception of social differentiations among teenagers and their parents. (Author/CS)