Reminiscence Bump Research Articles

Collecting and Using Autobiographical Memories in Rural Social Research: A Step-by-Step Guide

Human autobiographical memory, containing information on the self and its sociocultural surroundings, is a unique reservoir of knowledge, valuable in rural social research as well as in several other fields of study. However, the use of autobiographical memories as a source of retrospective information in (rural) social research remains largely underappreciated. This article introduces a five-step guide for designing and implementing research based on individuals’ cued autobiographical memories. The article also briefly outlines some major phenomena associated with human autobiographical memory (reminiscence bump, mood-incongruency, overgeneral memory, telescoping effect) and explains how they can affect a study based on participants’ autobiographical memories.

The post-80s generation in Beijing: collective memory and generational identity

AbstractThis article questions the relevance of the notion of generation to describe the cohort who lives in Beijing and who was born in the 1980s and early 1990s, after the implementation of the reforms and opening-up policy in China. The analysis relies on 627 questionnaires collected in Beijing in 2010. The sample was stratified by age and sex, and, based on quotas; it was split into five age groups (18-26 year-olds, 33-41 year-olds, 48-56 year-olds, 63-71 year-olds and 78-86 year-olds). The respondents were questioned on their perception of turning points and socio-historical changes that occurred during their lifetime. After having analysed the data in a comparative perspective, we came to conclusion that the word generation is suitable to describe the young people from Beijing born in the 1980s and early 1990s not only because they do share autobiographical and collective historical memories, but also because these memories have by and large taken place between their adolescence and entry into adulthood (supporting the hypothesis of the existence of a reminiscence bump).

The Bumps in Trinidadian Life: Reminiscence Bumps for Positive and Negative Life Events

SummaryThe study examined the life‐script account for a reminiscence bump in a Trinidadian sample (N = 100; range: 31–59 years old). The cue‐word technique elicited memories, and events (n = 809) were content‐coded as life scripted (e.g., marriage), considering normative ages from a preliminary study, unusual (e.g., traumatic events), or ordinary (e.g., a day at the beach). Two reminiscence bumps were found: one between 6 and 15 years old and another in the mid‐twenties, for both positive and negative events. The early bump was comprised mostly of ordinary events, regardless of participant's age. The second bump period was mostly unusual events, regardless of valence, although people ≥40 years old were producing this bump for negative life events. Life‐scripted events were found only in the early negative reminiscence bump. The discussion focuses on other theoretical interpretations for the findings (e.g., life‐story account), methodological considerations for future work, and cultural considerations. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Collective memory and autobiographical memory: Similar but not the same

Sociologists and psychologists have independently identified the same general period in individual development for the formation of many memories. Yet the cross-disciplinary similarity is rarely recognized, because most psychologists study autobiographical memories of personal events, while sociologists focus on collective memories of national and world events. We examine autobiographical and collective memories together within a large national cross-section survey of Americans. Both types of memory are located primarily in the same broad period, identified here as ages 5–30 years. However, within that period, autobiographical personal memories as measured by cue-word associations typically refer to earlier ages, while collective memories assessed with a standard open-ended question typically refer to somewhat later ages. Other types of questions yield still other memory content and ages. Reconceptualizing the reminiscence bump or critical period reconciles these diverse results.

Reminiscence bump and Adaptation in the old-old autobiographical memory

Reminiscence bump and Adaptation in the old-old autobiographical memory

Cascading Reminiscence Bumps in Popular Music

Autobiographical memories are disproportionately recalled for events in late adolescence and early adulthood, a phenomenon called the reminiscence bump. Previous studies on music have found autobiographical memories and life-long preferences for music from this period. In the present study, we probed young adults’ personal memories associated with top hits over 5-and-a-half decades, as well as the context of their memories and their recognition of, preference for, quality judgments of, and emotional reactions to that music. All these measures showed the typical increase for music released during the two decades of their lives. Unexpectedly, we found that the same measures peaked for the music of participants’ parents’ generation. This finding points to the impact of music in childhood and suggests that these results reflect the prevalence of music in the home environment. An earlier peak occurred for 1960s music, which may be explained by its quality or by its transmission through two generations. We refer to this pattern of musical cultural transmission over generations as cascading reminiscence bumps.

Cultural life script theory and the reminiscence bump: A reanalysis of seven studies across cultures

When asked to recall memories from their personal lives in response to word cues, adults older than 40 years report a significantly greater amount of memories from the time when they were 15–30 years old. This phenomenon is called the reminiscence bump. Cultural life story theory is a cultural explanation of the reminiscence bump. According to this account, the reminiscence bump is heavily influenced by the cultural life script – that is, shared expectations about the order and timing of life events in an ordinary life course. Life scripts locate a high proportion of major transitional life events in the second and third decades of life. The main purpose of this article was to review the empirical evidence and validity for the cultural life script theory. First, I describe the reminiscence bump and briefly mention the theories that attempt to explain why it occurs. Second, I describe the cultural life script theory and how the theory is related to autobiographical memories via life story events. Third, I describe the methodology that has been used to test the cultural life script theory. Finally, I provide a reanalysis of seven studies, based on the cultural life script theory conducted in four countries: Denmark, the USA, Turkey, and the Netherlands. As a part of this reanalysis, I examine the degree to which cultural life scripts guide recall of autobiographical memories by comparing the temporal distribution of life events obtained from the cultural life script (the cultural life script bump) and personal life story events (the reminiscence bump). Results of this reanalysis show that all life scripts across cultures have a lifespan distribution resembling the reminiscence bump. Furthermore, the distribution of the events of the life script generated by a group of old Danes in one of the studies resembles the distribution of their own life story events, suggesting that they used the information contained in the life script to retrieve personal memories.

Priming voluntary autobiographical memories: Implications for the organisation of autobiographical memory and voluntary recall processes

The goal of this study was to show that voluntary autobiographical memories could be primed by the prior activation of autobiographical memories. Three experiments demonstrated voluntary memory priming with three different approaches. In Experiment 1 primed participants were asked to recall memories from their elementary school years. In a subsequent memory task primed participants were asked to recall memories from any time period, and they produced significantly more memories from their elementary school years than unprimed participants. In Experiment 2 primed participants were asked to recall what they were doing when they had heard various news events occurring between 1998 and 2005. Subsequently these participants produced significantly more memories from this time period than unprimed participants. In Experiment 3 primed participants were asked to recall memories from their teenage years. Subsequently these participants were able to recall more memories from ages 13–15 than unprimed participants, where both had only 1 second to produce a memory. We argue that the results support the notion that episodic memories can activate one another and that some of them are organised according to lifetime periods. We further argue that the results have implications for the reminiscence bump and voluntary recall of the past.

Intergenerational Transmission of the Reminiscence Bump and Biographical Conflict Knowledge

In the study reported here, we investigated intergenerational transmission of life stories in two groups of young adults: a conflict group and a nonconflict group. Only participants in the conflict group had parents who lived through violent political upheaval. All participants recalled and dated 10 important events from one of their parents’ lives. There were three main findings. First, both groups produced sets of events that displayed a reminiscence bump related to the parent’s estimated age at the time of the event. Second, the majority of the events in both groups were transitions that were perceived to have exerted a significant psychological and material impact on a parent’s life. Third, in the conflict group, 25% of recalled events were conflict related. This finding indicates that historical conflict knowledge is passed from one generation to the next and that it is understood to have had a personally relevant, life-altering effect. Moreover, the findings suggest that transitional impact and perceived importance help determine which events children will remember from a parent’s life.

The Reminiscence Bump for Public Events: A Review of Its Prevalence and Taxonomy of Alternative Age Distributions

SummaryThe present paper examines the extant literature on the reminiscence bump for public events (the finding that public events are generally remembered best by those in adolescence or early adulthood at the time of their occurrence), with the aim of identifying (i) whether this bump in fact represents a legitimate effect, and (ii) the alternative age distributions that are otherwise seen in recall for public events. I conclude that, though the bump is frequently found, the legitimacy of the effect is contingent upon the strictness of the standard one employs. I also find significant exceptions to the bump, with a number of alternative age distributions seen in the literature. Therefore, I present a taxonomy of these alternative age distributions. Lastly, I discuss the implications of the existing literature regarding the mechanisms underlying the bump and offer suggestions for future research. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Reminiscence Bump in the Temporal Distribution of the Best Football Players of All Time: Pelé, Cruijff or Maradona?

The reminiscence bump is the tendency to recall more autobiographical memories from adolescence and early adulthood than from adjacent lifetime periods. In this online study, the robustness of the reminiscence bump was examined by looking at participants' judgements about the quality of football players. Dutch participants (N = 619) were asked who they thought the five best players of all time were. The participants could select the names from a list or enter the names when their favourite players were not on the list. Johan Cruijff, Pelé, and Diego Maradona were the three most often mentioned players. Participants frequently named football players who reached the midpoint of their career when the participants were adolescents (mode = 17). The results indicate that the reminiscence bump can also be identified outside the autobiographical memory domain.

A model for removing the increased recall of recent events from the temporal distribution of autobiographical memory

The reminiscence bump is the tendency to recall relatively many personal events from the period in which the individual was between 10 and 30 years old. This effect has only been found in autobiographical memory studies that used participants who were older than 40 years of age. The increased recall of recent events possibly obscures the reminiscence bump in the results of younger participants. In this study, a model was proposed that removes the increase for recent events from the temporal distribution. The model basically estimates a retention function based on the 10 most recent years from the observed distributions and divides the observed distributions by predictions derived from the estimated retention function. The model was examined with three simulated data sets and one experimental data set. The results of the experiment offered two practical examples of how the model could be used to investigate the temporal distribution of autobiographical memories.

Investigating the Memorable Experiences of the Senior Travel Market: An Examination of the Reminiscence Bump

ABSTRACT The importance of the senior travel market has been well-recognized by tourism marketers and researchers. While academic studies have begun to examine the psychological aspects of senior travelers, more progress must be made to investigate the psychology of memory, particularly with respect to the reminiscence bump, behind the nature of their memorable experiences (MEs). In-depth interviews with 42 respondents revealed five characteristics: identity formation, family milestones, relationship development, nostalgia reenactment, and freedom pursuits. Finally, the practical implications of this study are discussed and several avenues for future research are proposed.

Life story chapters, specific memories and the reminiscence bump

Theories of autobiographical memory posit that extended time periods (here termed chapters) and memories are organised hierarchically. If chapters organise memories and guide their recall, then chapters and memories should show similar temporal distributions over the life course. Previous research demonstrates that positive but not negative memories show a reminiscence bump and that memories cluster at the beginning of extended time periods. The current study tested the hypotheses that (1) ages marking the beginning of positive but not negative chapters produce a bump, and that (2) specific memories are over-represented at the beginning of chapters. Potential connections between chapters and the cultural life script are also examined. Adult participants first divided their life story into chapters and identified their most positive and most negative chapter. They then recalled a specific memory from both their most positive and most negative chapter. As predicted, the beginning age of positive but not negative chapters produced a bump and specific memories tended to cluster at chapter beginnings. The results support the idea that chapters guide the search for specific memories and that the cultural life script contributes to the search process.

The reminiscence bump for salient personal memories: Is a cultural life script required?

Older adults report a higher frequency of autobiographical memories for experiences that occurred between ages 15 and 30, as compared with other life periods. This reminiscence bump is evident for memories involving positive, but not negative, emotions. The cultural life script hypothesis proposes that people share knowledge for the types and timing of positive landmark events and that this script guides the memory search to the bump period. The present research examined whether a reminiscence bump would be evident when memory cues prompted recall of surprising and unexpected events. Older adults recalled positive and negative, surprising positive and surprising negative, or highly expected and highly unexpected events. Adults' memory distributions were compared with distributions of predicted life events generated by undergraduates. Reminiscence bumps were found not only for memories of positive and expected events, but also for memories of surprising and unexpected events. Implications for the life script account are discussed.

Temporal distribution of autobiographical memory: Uncovering the reminiscence bump in Japanese young and middle-aged adults1

The reminiscence bump is the effect that people recall more personal events from their teenage period than from adjacent lifetime periods. The effect is generally found in studies that divide the results of participants, who were at least 40 years old, into age bins of 10 years. In this study, the temporal distribution of autobiographical memories of Japanese young and middle-aged adults was examined. Because the questionnaire was presented on the internet, many participants could take part (N = 252). By dividing the personal events into smaller age bins and applying a mathematical method that corrects for the increased recall of recent events, a reminiscence bump could be identified in the memories of young adults. The location of the reminiscence bump of young adults was similar to the location of the reminiscence bump of middle-aged adults.

The Reminiscence Bump Reconsidered

The reminiscence bump—the reporting of more memories from young adulthood than from other stages of life—is considered a hallmark of autobiographical memory research. The most prevalent explanations for this effect assume that events in young adulthood are favored because of the way they are encoded and maintained in long-term memory. Here we show that a similar increase of events in early adulthood is found when children narrate their personal futures. In Study 1, children wrote their future life stories. The events in these life stories were mostly life-script events, and their distribution showed a clear bump in young adulthood. In Study 2, children were prompted by word cues to write down events from their future lives. The events generated consisted mostly of non-life-script events, and those events did not show a bump in young adulthood. Our findings challenge prevailing explanations of the reminiscence bump and suggest that the cultural life script forms an overarching organizational principle for autobiographical memories and future representations across the life span.

Remembering Positive and Negative Life Events

We examined distributions of remembered negative and positive life events across the lifespan in a sample of adults in middle and old age. Distributions of positive, but not negative, life events showed a significant reminiscence bump, replicating earlier findings. Gender differences occurred with respect to distribution of memories of positive life events of the first four decades of life. Furthermore, we found substantial associations of number and valence of remembered life events with future time perspective and functions of autobiographical memory to create meaning, which remained significant after controlling for age and health. The number and valence of negative and positive life events across the lifespan reflect, to a certain extent, the age and time perspective of the remembering individual.

Life scripts for emotionally charged autobiographical memories: A cultural explanation of the reminiscence bump

Two studies examined the ability of the life script account to explain the reminiscence bump for emotionally charged autobiographical memories among Malaysian participants. In Study 1 volunteers, aged 50–90 years, participated in a two-phased task. In the first phase, participants estimated the timing of 11 life events (both positive and negative) that may occur in a prototypical life course within their own culture. Two weeks later the participants retrieved the same set of events from their lives and reported how old they were when those events occurred. In the second study 92 undergraduate students produced life scripts for the same 11 events. The findings revealed reminiscence bumps in both life script and retrieval curves for the memories judged happiest, most important, most in love, and most jealous. A reminiscence bump was also noted for success, although this was later in the lifespan than other reminiscence bumps. It was suggested that the life scripts can be used as an alternative account for the reminiscence bump, for highly positive and occasionally for negative autobiographical memories.

Recent versus Remote: Flashbulb Memory for 9/11 and Self-Selected Events from the Reminiscence Bump

In two related studies, we examined flashbulb memories acquired from different points in the lifespan in younger and older adults. When asked to remember flashbulb memories from their lives, older adults were most likely to recall events from the reminiscence bump (Study 1A). In Study 1B, younger and older adults recalled 9/11 and a personal flashbulb event that occurred between ages 10 and 30. Older adults' memories of a recent event (9/11) were less likely than younger adults' to be classified as flashbulb memories; however, when memories were examined in their entirety, these age-related declines disappeared. Older adults' memories for a remote flashbulb event appeared to be quite similar, if not more detailed than their memories for the recent event, suggesting that remote flashbulb memories are relatively stable over time. Implications of these data for current views of flashbulb memory in late adulthood are discussed.