The reminiscence bump in autobiographical memory

• Main Author: Jansari, Ashok Surendra
• Published: University of Sussex 1995
• Subjects: 150; Korsakoff amnesia
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.260901

The reminiscence bump is a phenomenon whereby older subjects recall a disproportionately large number of autobiographical memories from the period of adolescence. Chapter 1 provides a background to the field of autobiographical memory and Chapters 2 and 3 evaluated a claim that this was due to self-definition occuring during this period which biases subsequent recall; however the results were not conclusive. Chapter 4 showed that a reason for the lack of a bump in younger subjects' recall could be an over-reliance on recent memories - blocking this produced a reminiscence bump in their recall. Chapter 5 explored the idea that preferential recall of memories from an earlier point in life was simply due to a sampling bias but found that early memories are consistently recalled more quickly than subsequent memories and also that there is a large proportion of first-time or unique memories in this period suggesting a long-term "primacy" effect. Chapters 6 and 7 attempted to see if autobiographical recall consisted of a U-shaped curve encompassing this primacy as well as an advantage for recent memories at the expense of mid-life memories. The results showed that early and very recent memories are consistently recalled more rapidly and with greater detail implying that the underlying representations themselves are strongerChapters 8 and 9 were case studies on two patients, one diagnosed as a Korsakoff and the other as suffering from "Focal Retrograde Amnesia". These two studies used the paradigms and findings from the work on normals in an attempt to explain the patterns of recall that are classically associated with these disorders. Finally, Chapter 10 assimilates the work both with normals and with the amnesic patients and attempts to explain the findings using a number of models concerning the organisation of normal memory