Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to clarify the characteristics of autobiographical memories of visitors’ experiences of science museums in Japan. A total of 812 adults (293 staffs of science museums, 421 undergraduate and graduate students, and 98 elderly adults), who had experiences of visits to science museums, participated in this study. The participants were asked to rate the preference of science museums at the time of elementary school children, and the autobiograhical memories of the museums in a questionnaire including the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire (MCQ) consisting of original 38 items and an item relating to the direct influence of the experience on the participants. The data were performed with a factor analysis, and it was found that the MCQ items were composed by five factors: clarity, meaningful interpretation, sensory experiences, temporal information, and feeling. The differential rating patterns for each factor in the three participant groups based on this factor structure of the MCQ. Moreover, multiple regression analyses on these data revealed that the the way that preference of science museums were predicted by the rating scores in each factor was different among the three partcipants groups.
