Regret as autobiographical memory

Abstract

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Understanding the reminiscence bump: A systematic review

“…Other methods. Other memory recall methods that were not associated with the three methods already discussed, were found in some studies (e.g., dream diaries, the evaluation of participants’ reactions to nostalgic advertising, a modified version of timeline methods for recording specific memories, issues surrounding the Academy Awards, World Series, and current events, life regrets’ content and chronology, and free recall events having public or private nature[9–11, 63, 65–67, 85, 110]. Adults were interviewed to discover their: recounted and oral life stories; specific autobiographical lifetime events; three favorite books, movies, and records, or the five best football players; and memories using the Yearly News Memory Test (YNMT) comprising 30 open-ended and multiple-choice questions [79, 80, 83, 97, 99, 102, 103, 112].…”

“…Other research studies focused on curves of forgetting after memorizing a 10-chapter autobiographical novel, flashbulb memories, AM recall, and memories from the lives of participants’ parents [24, 64]. Some studies investigated dreams of older adults’ life regrets; flashbulb memories; reactions to nostalgic advertisements; and responses to the World Series, academy awards, and current events [9, 11, 65, 67, 85]. And in other studies, researchers asked participants to report three favorite books, movies, and records as well as the five best sports players of all time [79, 83, 94, 100].…”

“…Japan, Bangladesh, U.K., China and the U.S.) revealed that more than 50% of memories were recalled from the ages of 10–30 [63]. Studies also showed a bump in late adolescence to early adulthood as well as a bump between 15 to 24 years of age [9, 11, 65, 67, 79, 85, 92, 94, 99]. Two studies, using a life history timeline method and a “life-line” interview method, discovered the bump between 10–30 and 10–40 years of age, respectively [66, 110].…”

“…Four studies supported the “life story” account [22, 66, 73, 105], three studies supported differential encoding and differential sampling [78, 79, 92], one study supported the “life-span perspective” [110], one study supported the cognitive account [97], and two studies showed some support for the “biological-maturational” account [30, 74]. Several research studies supported more than one theoretical account for the bump: the cultural life script and “novelty” accounts [64]; the narrative/identity and cultural life script accounts [65, 68, 107]; the narrative/identity, cognitive and “maturational” accounts [67, 96, 109]; the cognitive, narrative/identity, cultural life script, and life story accounts [69, 94]; the cognitive, narrative/identity, and cultural life script accounts [80]; the biological, narrative/identity, and cultural life script accounts [83]; and the cognitive and narrative/identity accounts [11].…”

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

“…When adults are asked to think back over their lives and identify salient emotional or important events, a bump is evident in the distribution of positive, but not negative, memories (for an exception, see Davison & Feeney, 2008, for memories of regret). Rubin and Berntsen (2003;Berntsen & Rubin, 2002 have argued that this divergent pattern of findings for positive and negative memories is best explained by a cultural life script hypothesis: "The retrieval of autobiographical memories is governed by culturally shared representations of the prototypical life cycle that locate the majority of important transitional events in young adulthood and favor positive events" (p. 2).…”