The ‘reminiscence bump’ is a quirk of autobiographical memory – the memories you hold of the things that have happened in your life to date.
Generally speaking, our memories are better for more recent events – you’re more likely to remember what you did yesterday, than what you did on this day a year ago.
But the reminiscence bump breaks this rule: it describes the way that we tend to have a particularly good memory for events that occurred during our teenage years and early adulthood, compared with more recent times.
Psychologists have shown the reminiscence bump at work in various ways. For instance, if you’re in your thirties or older, you’re more likely to remember significant public events that occurred when you're between 10 and 30 years old and to remember more details about those events.
What’s more, if I asked you to name your favourite footballer, you’d probably name a player from that same period. Ditto for your favourite band or film. You can test this out with different generations of your family.
There are a few theories for why we show a reminiscence bump. One has to do with the way that so many of our experiences in our teens and twenties are formative – they become entwined in our developing sense of who we are – making them highly memorable.
A related theory states that there are a lot of first-time experiences when we’re young – from our first kiss or first trip abroad, to our first concert or football match – and the novelty of these experiences makes them highly memorable.
A more mundane explanation is that our mental fitness and memory capabilities reach their peak in the second and third decades of life, thus giving us particularly good recall for that period.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Adam Sutherland, Ripon) 'What is the reminiscence bump?'
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