Over the summer, I was having dinner with my mom, dad, and brother. After discussing our day, my dad started talking about a memory from high school. He was an avid biker in high school, and was telling us about the time he and some friends participated in a big bike race. He recalled this story with so much detail; it was as though it had just happened yesterday. My dad’s face lit up when telling this story, and once he told this story, he kept going. He told us lots of other memories from around this time of his life. He talked about being part of the National Honors Society his senior year of high school, he told us about adventures he and his roommates went on during college, and he told us about working in a movie theater the summer after graduation.
After my dad told his stories, my mom started telling stories from college. She, too, had lots of stories about her college experience. My mom and dad were both so happy, telling these stories from their early adult years. They were going back and forth, recounting these stories from high school and college that seemed to really stick out in their mind.
Once they finished their stories, my brother asked my parents about their childhood. He pointed out that they both spent a lot of time telling high school and college stories, but he wanted to hear stories from when they were in elementary school. My parents looked at each other, thought for a moment, but didn’t have much to say. My mom shared a short story about a beach trip she went on, but it was brief and without much detail. After she shared this, my brother asked my dad if he ever went to the beach as a child. My dad looked unsure and said that he didn’t think so. My brother tried to push them for more stories from their childhood, but neither had much to say.
In the textbook, the authors discuss something called the reminiscence bump. The reminiscence bump is, “The enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood found in people over 40” (Goldstein, 2015, p. 210). During this dinner conversation, my parents (who are both over 40) displayed the reminiscence bump perfectly. They both had so many memories from high school and college that were incredibly vivid in their mind. They were eager to share these stories with us, and shared them with great detail. This enhanced memory makes sense, because these stories occurred during their adolescence and young adulthood (i.e. the period of time the reminiscence bump predicts they would remember well). Moreover, the reminiscence bump also explains why my parents didn’t remember their childhood as well as their early adulthood. Both parents seemed to have limited memories of what happened to them as children, but phenomenal memories of what happened to them in high school and college.
The textbook discusses possible explanations for the reminiscence bump. According to the authors, one explanation for my parents’ enhanced memory of their adolescence and young adulthood is the self-image hypothesis, which states that because an individual’s identity develops rapidly during adolescence and young adulthood, they remember this time better (Goldstein, 2015, p. 210). Another explanation is the cognitive hypothesis, which states that the rapid changes individuals experience during adolescence and young adulthood, which are then followed by a period of stability, cause stronger encoding of memories (Goldstein, 2015, p. 210). A final explanation is the cultural life script hypothesis, which states that there is a culturally-defined progression of events that occur in our lives, and that we better organize and recall events that follow this progression (Goldstein, 2015, p. 211).
Overall, based on what we know about our memory, it should come as no surprise that my parents remembered their adolescence and early adulthood with such detail. The three hypotheses above all provide possible explanations for why my parents remembered these periods of their life so well. It would be interesting to have this conversation again in 25 years (when my brother and I are both over 40) to see if my brother and I also experience the reminiscence bump.
Goldstein, E.B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience, 4th Edition. Cengage Learning.