The reminiscence bump in autobiographical memory: Effects of age, gender, education, and culture

What is it about?

The reminiscence bump is people’s tendency to recall many memories from adolescence and early adulthood. To examine whether the location of the reminiscence is affected by gender, age, educational attainment or culture, nearly 2000 participants from the United States and the Netherlands were given 10 cue words and were asked to describe the memories that came to mind first. With the help of a mathematical model, memories about recent events were removed from the distribution. Age group and educational attainment did not influence the location of the reminiscence bump, but there were small effects of gender and culture.

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Why is it important?

Whereas other studies only reported the reminiscence bump for middle-aged or older adults, this study has been the first study to observe the reminiscence bump for young adults. However, to make such observation, many memories are needed to distribute them across smaller age bins and the distribution needs to be adjusted for the increased recall of recent events.