Neuroscience
Research shows we're better at recollecting events that occurred during our teens and early twenties than during any other period in our lives - an anomaly that experts call the "reminiscence bump". One explanation for the bump, according to Steve Janssen and colleagues, is that our memories work more efficiently during our teens and early adulthood relative to other periods in our lives.
The problem with testing that biological account, however, is that it is possible events are more memorable from our teens and early twenties simply because they were more meaningful to us. Just think, your first driving lesson or first kiss will obviously be more memorable than subsequent ones.
As a way round this, Janssen's team invited over 1000 people aged between 16 and 75 years to complete an internet-based test of events that had occurred in the news between 1950 and 2006. For example, "In which city was US President John F Kennedy assassinated in 1963?"; and "What was the name of the hurricane that flooded New Orleans in 2005?".
The computer programme that ran the test ensured that each participant answered 30 questions from three periods: from before they were ten years' old; from the era when they were aged 10 to 25 years; and from when they were older than 25 years. Some questions were multiple-choice, whereas others were free recall.
Among the younger participants, the recency effect (our tendency to better recall more recent events) and the reminiscence bump could be confused, so the researchers removed the influence of the recency effect from the data. Having done that, the researchers found clear evidence that participants of all ages tended to have a better memory for events that occurred during their teens and early twenties than at other times. This was particularly the case for the free-recall questions.
The researchers said their finding backs up the idea that events are stored better in adolescence and early adulthood because the brain works at an optimum during those periods (although they acknowledged this doesn't mean that other explanations don't also play a role). The new finding is also consistent with research showing that people tend to recall books, films and music from their teens and early twenties when asked to name their favourites.
What remains unclear is why memory works optimally during adolescence and early adulthood. "Is this effect caused by changing levels of hormones or neurotransmitters?" the researchers asked. "Or does working memory have a larger capacity in adolescence, enabling more memories to be stored? More work, by psychologists as well as neuroscientists, will be required to answer this question."
_________________________________
Janssen, S., Murre, J., Meeter, M. (2007). Reminiscence bump in memory for public events. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 20(4), 738-764. DOI: 10.1080/09541440701554409
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Introducing The Youth Bias - How We Think (almost) Everything Happens When We're Young
The idea that young people might find the world a stranger, more exciting place than older people makes intuitive sense. They've had less time to grow familiar with life. What's irrational is to believe that more significant public events happen...
- Doubt Cast On The Maxim That Time Goes Faster As You Get Older
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- Extras
Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut: This sounds familiar: a memory-based account of deja vu (pdf). The kind of streets older people like to walk down. Examining why we remember so much more from adolescence and early adulthood than...
- Tapping Into People's Earliest Memories
When it comes to psychologists identifying people's earliest memories, the approach they take matters a lot. That's according to New Zealand psychologists Fiona Jack and Harlene Hayne who say their finding helps explain some of the mixed opinion...
- Where Did All The Memories Go?
What’s your earliest memory? If you’re an adult, it’s unlikely to be from before you were three and half to four years old. So what happens to your memories from before that age? It’s not that you never had any: two and three-year-olds gladly...
Neuroscience
We remember more from our teens and early twenties than from any other time of life
Research shows we're better at recollecting events that occurred during our teens and early twenties than during any other period in our lives - an anomaly that experts call the "reminiscence bump". One explanation for the bump, according to Steve Janssen and colleagues, is that our memories work more efficiently during our teens and early adulthood relative to other periods in our lives.The problem with testing that biological account, however, is that it is possible events are more memorable from our teens and early twenties simply because they were more meaningful to us. Just think, your first driving lesson or first kiss will obviously be more memorable than subsequent ones.
As a way round this, Janssen's team invited over 1000 people aged between 16 and 75 years to complete an internet-based test of events that had occurred in the news between 1950 and 2006. For example, "In which city was US President John F Kennedy assassinated in 1963?"; and "What was the name of the hurricane that flooded New Orleans in 2005?".
The computer programme that ran the test ensured that each participant answered 30 questions from three periods: from before they were ten years' old; from the era when they were aged 10 to 25 years; and from when they were older than 25 years. Some questions were multiple-choice, whereas others were free recall.
Among the younger participants, the recency effect (our tendency to better recall more recent events) and the reminiscence bump could be confused, so the researchers removed the influence of the recency effect from the data. Having done that, the researchers found clear evidence that participants of all ages tended to have a better memory for events that occurred during their teens and early twenties than at other times. This was particularly the case for the free-recall questions.
The researchers said their finding backs up the idea that events are stored better in adolescence and early adulthood because the brain works at an optimum during those periods (although they acknowledged this doesn't mean that other explanations don't also play a role). The new finding is also consistent with research showing that people tend to recall books, films and music from their teens and early twenties when asked to name their favourites.
What remains unclear is why memory works optimally during adolescence and early adulthood. "Is this effect caused by changing levels of hormones or neurotransmitters?" the researchers asked. "Or does working memory have a larger capacity in adolescence, enabling more memories to be stored? More work, by psychologists as well as neuroscientists, will be required to answer this question."
_________________________________
Janssen, S., Murre, J., Meeter, M. (2007). Reminiscence bump in memory for public events. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 20(4), 738-764. DOI: 10.1080/09541440701554409Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Introducing The Youth Bias - How We Think (almost) Everything Happens When We're Young
The idea that young people might find the world a stranger, more exciting place than older people makes intuitive sense. They've had less time to grow familiar with life. What's irrational is to believe that more significant public events happen...
- Doubt Cast On The Maxim That Time Goes Faster As You Get Older
Time gets faster the older you are. Or does it? When William Friedman and Steve Janssen asked 49 New Zealand undergrads (average age 21) and 50 older adults (average age 68) to say how fast time passed for them, including the last week, month and year,...
- Extras
Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut: This sounds familiar: a memory-based account of deja vu (pdf). The kind of streets older people like to walk down. Examining why we remember so much more from adolescence and early adulthood than...
- Tapping Into People's Earliest Memories
When it comes to psychologists identifying people's earliest memories, the approach they take matters a lot. That's according to New Zealand psychologists Fiona Jack and Harlene Hayne who say their finding helps explain some of the mixed opinion...
- Where Did All The Memories Go?
What’s your earliest memory? If you’re an adult, it’s unlikely to be from before you were three and half to four years old. So what happens to your memories from before that age? It’s not that you never had any: two and three-year-olds gladly...