What’s the Reminiscence Bump?
If you were to think about your life, what period would you remember best? If you said your teens and 20s, you’re not alone. There’s even a name for the phenomenon. It’s called the reminiscence bump and researchers have been studying why our adolescence and young adulthood is so memorable for more than 30 years.
The basic idea of the reminiscence bump is that people over the age of 40 remember more memories from the age of between 10 or 15 to 30 than any other time in their life. Studies have been replicated across cultures using different types of cues, recalling vivid, the most important, autobiographical, and stories they would put in a book about their life.
Theories on why this is true have varied. Some believe we remember these times because youth have younger minds that are better at remembering. As we age, we simply cannot remember as much because our cognitive function declines.
Other theories say it is because of the number of new and novel experiences that are occurring during this period of time. One 1998 study showed that 98 percent of recalled experiences were related to new or novel experiences. Since we are experiences so many “firsts” during this time, the idea is that the brain remembers them more clearly.
But this doesn’t explain the reminiscence bump entirely. If you think back to the experiences…
