Individual differences in the reminiscence bump of very long-term memory for popular songs in old age: A non-linear mixed model approach

Abstract

Recognition of popular songs from one’s past shows a phenomenon that is known as a “reminiscence bump” from autobiographical memory research, namely, the increased recognition performance of songs from one’s youth and early adulthood. As a first goal of the present study, a non-linear functional relation between popular song recognition performance and song-specific age of an individual was examined. As a second goal, individual differences in recognition performance curves were taken into account by including random effects. The third goal was to explain individual differences by including predictor variables. The sample comprised 90 participants aged 70 to 75 years. Participants listened to excerpts of 51 songs of the German charts from the years 1945 to 1995. Results show that the average bump performance was 75%, that the bump was located at about 17 years of age, and that the inflection point was located at 31 years. Individual differences could be explained by the number of correctly recognized songs, musical taste during one’s youth, and the frequency and preference of listing to bump songs. To conclude, an individual differences approach based on a non-linear function relation has been found to be a promising way to understand why popular songs from one’s youth are remembered better.

Farewell to Holbrook & Schindler’s (1989) “Song-Specific Age”? – Little Evidence for Lifelong Influence of Age-Specific Musical Preferences

“…However, the magnitude of the random factor “song” can be estimated from previous research: As revealed by Zimprich and Wolf (2016), every recognized song in their study which fell under the category of “bump years” (the age range between 10 and 30 years) decreased the mean of the memory distribution by 1.77 years. In contrast, Zimprich (2020) reported that the number of recognized songs resulted in a higher and later bump. These random effects cannot be avoided as long as no standardized set of musical stimuli and no research design is used; however, we point out that our multilevel regression analysis (see Column 1 of Table S7 in the Supplemental Material section) only revealed a relatively small contribution of 8.9% for this random part of the total variance.…”

“…The study by Loveday et al (2020) joins this line of research on the role of personally relevant music during the developmental phase of adolescence and early adulthood (10–30 years): Based on self-selected songs suggested by guests of a long-running radio show, it was found that 50% of selected songs had a personal significance (links to memories of a person) released during the ages of 10 to 30 with a peak between 10 to 20 years. The influence of individual variables such as sex or musical preference for genres on the location of the age peak for song preference was observed by Zimprich (2020): In a sample of persons aged 70–75 years, a maximum point (memory bump) for the recognition of popular songs from 1945 to 1995 was found at an SSA of about 17–19 years. To summarize, all these studies showed a high diversity of age peaks covering a wide age range (an observation which is supported by the systematic review by Munawar et al, 2018).…”

Public events knowledge in an age-heterogeneous sample: Reminiscence bump or bummer?

“…Sporadic findings of a small reminiscence effect in PEK might therefore be driven by the autobiographical content of these public events when experienced firsthand. This would also explain findings of a reminiscence bump in studies that ask about favorite music or popular songs (e.g., Rathbone et al, 2017;Zimprich, 2020), for which personal significance and emotional arousal play a role. Identification with the music listened to in adolescence and early adulthood affects the self-narrative markedly (Holmes & Conway, 1999), which later facilitates recall of these experiences.…”

What characterizes the reminiscence bump in autobiographical memory? New answers to an old question

“…Reminiscence bumps were also found for autobiographical memories elicited under more or less restrictive recall instructions, for example, for vivid or important autobiographical memories (e.g., Ece & Gülgöz, 2014;Fitzgerald, 1988;Glück & Bluck, 2007;Rubin & Schulkind, 1997a;Webster & Gould, 2007), or free (uncued) recall from different periods of participants' lives (e.g., Conway, Wang, Hanyu, & Haque, 2005;Demiray et al, 2009). Moreover, reminiscence bumps have been found for preferences in cultural life such as literature, film, or music (Holbrook & Schindler, 1989;Janssen et al, 2007;Larsen, 1996;Rathbone, O'Connor, & Moulin, 2017;Zimprich, 2018;.…”