Remembering autobiographically consequential experiences: Content analysis of psychologists' accounts of their lives.

Mackavey, William R.; Malley, Janet E.; Stewart, Abigail J.

doi:10.1037/0882-7974.6.1.50

Cited by 28 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…When recalling memories from their lives, individuals also recall fewer memories from early childhood, termed childhood amnesia, and more memories from the recent years, termed the recency effect (Rubin et al, 1998;Rubin & Schulkind, 1997a,b). The bump becomes more pronounced when asking for memories that are vivid, important, or central to the life story, which also abolishes the recency effect (Elnick, Margrett, Fitzgerald, & Labouvie-Vief, 1999;Fitzgerald, 1988Fitzgerald, , 1992Mackavey, Malley, & Stewart, 1991;Rubin & Schulkind, 1997a). In addition, the bump has been found when asking for general knowledge, important historical events, and preferred books, films, and music (Rubin et al, 1998).…”

Section: The Bumpmentioning

confidence: 92%

The cultural life script and life story chapters contribute to the reminiscence bump

Thomsen

Berntsen

2008

Memory

130

139

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A total of 59 older Danes recorded five life story memories. They divided their life story into chapters and provided their age for the start and end of each chapter. Life story memories were coded for whether they were placed at the start or end of chapters and for their correspondence to the cultural life script. Chapters and life story memories showed a bump in terms of an increased recall of life story memories and chapters between ages 6 and 30. Chapter start and end memories, more frequently than other memories, referred to prominent cultural life script events. The bump was significantly stronger for memories that referred to both prominent cultural life script events and chapter starts or ends. The findings suggest that the cultural life script helps to identify beginning and ends of chapters in autobiographical memory, and that both the cultural life script and organisation in terms of chapters influence the recall of life story memories and may help to explain the bump.

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Section: The Bumpmentioning

confidence: 92%

The cultural life script and life story chapters contribute to the reminiscence bump

Thomsen

Berntsen

2008

Memory

130

139

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“…Mackavey, Malley, and Stewart (1991) analyzed the chapter-long autobiographies of 49 eminent psychologists for what they termed autobiographically consequential experiences. Many of these experiences were of single episodes and were often of vivid or flashbulb quality.…”

Section: Preference For Events From Early Adulthoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best

1998

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Evidence is reviewed that for older adults the period from 10 to 30 years of age produces recall of the most autobiographical memories, the most vivid memories, and the most important memories. It is the period from which peoples' favorite films, music, and books come and the period from which they judge the most important world events to have originated. Factual, semantic, general-knowledge, multiple-choice questions about the Academy Awards, the World Series, and current events from this period were answered more accurately by two different groups of 30 older adults tested 10 years apart. A cognitive theory based on the importance of transitions and several noncognitive theories are considered as explanations of this pervasive phenomenon.Adolescence and early adulthood are special times for memory encoding. There is solid evidence that people recall a disproportionate number of autobiographical memories from that period when they are asked to recall important events, or recall vivid memories, or recall the first event that comes to mind when they are cued by a word. There is also some evidence, which we will add to here, that people answer general-knowledge, semantic-memory questions more accurately if the questions are about information that they have learned during those years. Adolescence and early adulthood are special in other ways. In our culture, it is when people come ofage, when their place in society is formed. It is a time ofidentityformation (Erikson, 1950). It is the time oftheir generation (Schuman & Scott, 1989), their era (Sehulster, 1996). Things were better then, or at least more vivid and exciting. It is the time for which we have the most nostalgia (Holbrook, 1993 3In this paper, we will first review the autobiographicalmemory and preference literature in order to document that events or activities that occur between the ages of 10 and 30 are recalled more often and judged to be more important or better than events or activities from other age periods. This increase in performance with respect to, or preference for, the time between the ages of 10 and 30 constitutes what may be called a bump, and we will also describe the range ofphenomena for which this bump exists. Next, we will describe a study in which we used objective five-choice questions about three domains of public information in order to extend this finding to the recall ofsemantic, general-knowledge factual information. We will suggest four accounts, based on different approaches in psychology, of why this bump in memory and preference might occur. Thus, we will first document and extend the existence of the phenomenon and only then try to understand it (Rubin, 1989;Rubin & Wenzel, 1996). We have chosen to do this in part because although theories have been put forth to explain the bump in autobiographical memory and other domains, the bump occurs in a range of situations, and it seems parsimonious to consider theories that could account for all the data. For instance, showing that the bump occurs for factual, semantic memory c...

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“…Finally, the autobiographically consequential experiences found by Mackavey, et al (1991) to be associated with early adulthood were predominantly non-episodic, or general in nature.…”

Section: Chapter Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The bump is observed for memories involving people"s most vivid (Fitzgerald, 1988), most important (Rubin & Schulkind, 1997c;Fromholt & Larsen, 1991 and most significant life events (Elnick, Margrett, Fitzgerald & Labouvie-Vief, 1999) and is strong even when participants report their memories in narrative form (Fitzgerald, 1988). People would include events from the bump period in a book about their lives (Fitzgerald, 1996) and an analysis of 49 eminent psychologists" autobiographies suggests that in fact they do (Mackavey, Malley & Stewart, 1991). According to a cognitive scientist"s reading of Proust"s (1913Proust"s ( /1957 classic of remembering, most of the remembered episodes in the narrator"s life are derived from the period of early adulthood (Delacour, 2001).…”

Section: Replications Of the Reminiscence Bump And Some Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regret as autobiographical memory

Davison

Feeney

2008

Cognitive Psychology

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Remembering autobiographically consequential experiences: Content analysis of psychologists' accounts of their lives.

Cited by 28 publications

References 21 publications

The cultural life script and life story chapters contribute to the reminiscence bump

The cultural life script and life story chapters contribute to the reminiscence bump

Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best

Regret as autobiographical memory

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