The reminiscence bump is the tendency for adults over forty to have increased or enhanced recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood. It was identified through the study of autobiographical memory and the subsequent plotting of the age of encoding of memories to form the lifespan retrieval curve.
The lifespan retrieval curve is a graph that represents the number of autobiographical memories encoded at various ages during the life span. The lifespan retrieval curve contains three different parts. From birth to five years old is a period of childhood amnesia, from 15 to 25 years old is the reminiscence bump and last is a period of forgetting from the end of the reminiscence bump to present time. The reminiscence bump has been observed on the lifespan retrieval curve in multiple studies. From 8 to 22 years old is the word-cued reminiscence bump and 15 to 27 years old is the important reminiscence bump.https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?journal=Journal%20of%20Applied%20Research%20in%20Memory%20and%20Cognition&title=The%20peaks%20of%20life:%20The%20differential%20temporal%20locations%20of%20the%20reminiscence%20bump%20across%20disparate%20cueing%20methods&author=J%20Koppel&author=D%20Berntsen&volume=4&publication_year=2015&pages=66-80&https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4850910/
Theorists have proposed several explanations, ranging from changes in brain biology to the type of events that typically occur during this time period. Researchers have consistently observed the reminiscence bump, the period of increased memory accessibility in participants' lifespan retrieval curves, and the bump has been reproduced under a range of study conditions.
Theories Adolescence and early adulthood have been described as important times in memory encoding because individuals typically recall a disproportionate number of autobiographical memories from those periods. The reminiscence bump accounts for this disproportionate number of memories. The reminiscence bump typically occurs between 10 years of age and 30 years of age and is the period that individuals produce the most memories during free recall tasks. Research suggests that memories are easily accessible from the reminiscence bump because they are linked to self-identity. The memories found within the reminiscence bump significantly contribute to an individual's life goals, self-theories, attitudes, and beliefs. Additionally, life events that occur during the period of the reminiscence bump, such as graduation, marriage, or the birth of a child, are often very novel, thus, making them more memorable.
There are three possible hypotheses of the reminiscence bump: a cognitive account, a narrative/identity account, and a biological/maturational account.
The cognitive account suggests that memories are remembered best because they occur during a period of rapid change followed by a period of relative stability. There is an assumed memory advantage for the novel and distinct events that is followed by a period of stability. The novel events are subject to greater elaborative cognitive processing leading to stronger encoding of these memories. Moreover, the period of stability that follows increases the stability of the cues for these memories and increases the chances of recall.
The narrative/identity account suggests that the reminiscence bump occurs because a sense of self-identity develops during adolescence and early adulthood. Research suggests that memories that have more influence and significance to one's self are more frequently rehearsed in defining one's identity, and are therefore better remembered later in life (Ece & Gulgoz, 2014). Self-identity formation provides added motivation for using cognitive processes to ensure recall of these memories. The events from this period are more likely to be organized into a story or view of oneself, and benefits from the advantage of schematic organization in memory.
The biological/maturational account suggests that genetic fitness is improved by having many memories that fall within the reminiscence bump. Cognitive capacities are at their optimum from the ages of 10 to 30 and the reminiscence bump may reflect a peak in cognitive performance. This account is therefore sometimes called the cognitive abilities account. Researchers have suggested that the increase of cognitive ability in early adulthood may cause memories during this time period to be more adequately stored (Ece & Gulgoz, 2014). The reminiscence bump is caused by age-related differences in encoding efficiency, which cause more memories to be stored in adolescence and early adulthood.
There is one additional theory that explains the occurrence of the reminiscence bump: the life script account. A life script refers to the series of culturally important transitional events that are expected to occur in a certain order at various points during the life span. During early adulthood one starts to make important decisions and have influencing experiences on his or her identity. The memories during this time period are therefore more significantly remembered because they are what has essentially determined and influenced their life script (Habernas & Bluck, 2000). A life script typically has the majority of expected transitional experiences occur during early adulthood (Gluck & Bluck, 2007), and usually includes positive experiences such as marriage, the birth of a baby, or buying a house. Events that deviate from the life script are typically sad and traumatic. These events, such as the death of a child, are not culturally expected and often do not show a peak of recall at any specific point during the life span. Life scripts act as a way to structure memory and lead to the expectation that the happiest and the most important life events form the reminiscence bump. Contrary to the recall of happy events, the recall of sad events remains stable across the life span and does not exhibit a bump in recall.
Methodology
Galton cue-word technique Used objects from his environment to cue memories from his life. Galton created lists of cue-words to stimulate memory recall. He recorded the amount of time required to recall an autobiographical memory related to the cue- word and note the distribution of memories over the life span.
Crovitz-Schiffman cue-word technique Mimicked Galton's technique and had participants recall and date autobiographical memories in response to the cue- words. Participants were encouraged to share the first memory they thought of. This technique is consistent and reproducible under different conditions, such as using different participants or cue- words. There is a consistent peak of recalled memories within the reminiscence bump. However, different types of cue words, such as nouns and adjectives, elicited memories from different time periods and with different phenomenology.
Conway and Haque cue-word technique These researchers presented cue-words in the form of common locations (restaurants, markets, parks), objects (chair, table, television), positive emotions (happy, joy, cheerful), negative emotions (frustration, pain, sad), and significant others (father, mother, friend). Participants were asked to retrieve a memory that reminded them of the cue- word, recall memories from across their lifespan, and recall memories that were at least a year old. Then participants were asked to date the memory to the nearest month and year. The results were graphed on a lifespan retrieval curve, and the reminiscence bump was observed.
Fluency tests Have participants indicate important personal events on a timeline. Participants are given a timeline with intervals (e.g., 5 years per interval) and asked to fill in events that come to mind and indicate age during the event. This gives the participant the ability to recall freely rather than be limited to artificial cue- words. The time intervals focus the participant on certain periods and control the amount of time spent searching for memories.
Participants are given a time period and asked to recall as many personal events as possible from that period. It assesses the ability to generate both personal semantic and personal incident memories. Recalling the personal semantic memories, participants try to produce as many examples of names of people known to them in a 90-second period. This is repeated for three lifetime periods: childhood, early adulthood, and recent adult life. Recalling personal incident memories, participants try to produce as many personally experienced events as possible in a 90-second period, and it is also repeated for three lifetime periods.
Free recall method Subjects share personal events and researchers compare involuntary and voluntary memories of young and older children. Participants read ten words and are asked to recall as many of the words as they can in no particular order. Then participants were asked to keep a diary on their memory process between two one-hour experimental sessions. They were asked to record autobiographical memories as soon as possible, using a two-page questionnaire for each memory. Allowed researchers to keep track of personal thoughts and events.
Twenty Statements Test (TST) Participants provide 20 self-concepts that start with "I am..." This enables the collection of concepts and roles that are important to the definition of self. There is no unitary structure to self, it is a combination of self-schemata such as "I am a mother". These self-concepts, or self-images, are then used as autobiographical memory cues, enabling the distribution of highly self-relevant memories to be plotted across the lifespan.
Word-cued vs. Important memories Subjects share personal events and researchers compare word-cued and important memories with the mean range of the bump located from 8.7 to 22.5 years of age for word-cued memories, versus 15.1 to 27.9 for important memories, likely due to childhood amnesia, which ends around the age of 8.
Social and cultural influences
Literature, cinema, music and video games The reminiscence bump can be observed in the distributions of people's favorite books, movies, records and video games.
Generation identity Generation identity occurs when an individual recognises that they are part of a particular social subgroup, a cultural generation, and concern themselves with the internalization of external features of the world. The reminiscence bump occurs during a period of life where people form their individual and generational identity. The earlier years of the reminiscence bump coincide with the formation of generation identity, while the later years coincide with the formation of adult identity.
The influence of generation identity on the reminiscence bump can be attributed to the idea that all members of the subgroup are likely to have memories of similar types of experiences. Evidence attesting to the influence of generation identity on the reminiscence bump has been witnessed in populations that have experience with traumatic events. In 1999, researchers compared younger and older groups of Bangladeshis. The younger group (ages 20–42) showed the usual increase in memories during the reminiscence bump while the older group (ages 46–86) showed a second increase in memories between the ages of 35 and 55. The second bump experienced by the older group corresponded to the period of the Bangladesh Liberation War. The two generations showed similar patterns and timing of memory recall within their own subgroup, suggesting that they did have similar experiences, either living or not living through the war. This finding may suggests that each generation remember personal events and generational events.
Memory for public events and private events