Using sensory cues to curate, study and support autobiographical remembering across the lifespan

Autobiographical memory is integral to who we are and how we connect with the world around us. One intriguing feature of personal memories is that people typically find it easier to access memories from late adolescence and early adulthood. This phenomenon, the reminiscence bump, has been riddled with inconsistencies in the methodology. This has implications for understanding the underlying mechanisms, which in turn impacts on both the theoretical models of memory and the clinical practices that rely on personal narrative. This programme of research specifically addresses key confounds within the literature by systematically exploring the effect of different task instructions on the temporal location of memories.

Study 1 explored secondary data of 55 interview guests from a popular radio programme, in which they chose eight songs to take to a desert island in a free recall setting. Despite no explicit instruction to describe a specific memory, self-selected songs produced a reminiscence bump and particularly included memories of people. Study 2 developed this methodology for an experimental setting and also compared music with tangible stimuli, which produced distinctive retrieval curves. These distinctions may have been due to the wording and order of instructions therefore this was addressed in Study 3. The refined procedure was carried out with an older group, which also directly compared self-selected with experimenter-provided stimuli as memory cues. Self-selected stimuli produced more specific memories overall and once again, the different stimuli evoked memories that reflected distinctive lifespan retrieval curves. Given that the musical reminiscence bump remained reliable in all studies, Study 4 examined this across different choice conditions and cue modalities. Freely chosen music evoked higher nostalgia and a greater number of specific and self-defining memories than music selected from a fixed list. Lastly, Study 5 explored this methodology in an applied setting for an individual with mild cognitive impairment. The findings revealed the positive but unexpected impact of collaborative remembering with a cognitively healthy partner, who facilitated memory retrieval.

While the reminiscence bump has been considered a robust finding, these experiments have shown that it is significantly influenced by the nature of retrieval, in particular the degree of choice and cue type. Personally curated cues evoke important memories including those that are self and relationship-defining. This has significant implications for clinical interventions and social policy.