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The development of memory
Published in David Cohen, How the child's mind develops, 2017
According to Martin Conway (1998) of Bristol University, a key change happens at around the age of 12 or 13. Our memories from our teenage years and up to the age of 25 are better than we have reason to expect. We can remember the recent past best, but then there’s what is called a reminiscence bump for the years between 13 and 25. The reason, Conway argues, is linked to the ideas of the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. Erikson (1977) argued that between these ages, our sense of identity gels. However old we become, we tend to remember the things that happened to us then. Conway suggests that this is because in this period we have conscious formative experiences – the first date, the first kiss, the exam success that makes the family proud, the realisation that we are never going to play football well enough to get a test for a real club, university, the first job. And so we remember these events better because they are the building blocks of our identity.
Changes in Cognitive Function in Human Aging
Published in David R. Riddle, Brain Aging, 2007
Autobiographical memory involves memory for one’s personal past and includes memories that are both episodic and semantic in nature. The bulk of the evidence suggests that recent memories are easiest to retrieve, those from early childhood are most difficult to retrieve, and there is a monotonic decrease in retention from the present to the most remote past, with one exception. Events that occurred between the ages of 15 and 25 are recalled at a higher rate — what is referred to as the reminiscence bump — a finding that has usually been attributed to the greater salience or emotionality of the memories during this time period. This general pattern holds across all ages, suggesting that autobiographical memory is largely preserved with age (for review, see [35]). More detailed analyses of the nature of the autobiographical information retrieved, however, has suggested that although memory for personal semantics is intact in old age, memory for specific episodic or contextual details about one’s personal past may be impaired. In a recent study, Levine et al. [36] observed that although older adults reported the gist of autobiographical event memories as well as young people, they reported fewer details. There may be exceptions to this finding, however. Recent studies of flashbulb memory have demonstrated that older adults remember as much as young adults about the details and circumstances surrounding highly emotional public events such as the death of Princess Diana or the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City [37, 38].
Trigger Memories through Material Culture in Mexican People Living with Dementia
Published in Paul A. Rodgers, Design for People Living with Dementia, 2022
“The furniture configuration is a faithful representation of the family and social structures of an era” (Baudrillard, 1969, 13). This fact guides us to an evocative design using the arrangement from the reminiscence bump1 of the people with dementia. Researchers know that autobiographical memory is not distributed equally across our lifespan; this bump of memories is from a specific period of our lives, not from our first years, not from the last ones. The reminiscence bump refers to young adulthood, and it depends on the culture. Beyond their functionality, the way we place our furnishings reflects our family traditions and practices. Positioning orthopaedic aids or therapeutic devices without thinking beyond the functional features can generate behaviours like aggressiveness or wandering because these tools are outside the contour of a person's memories – they are strange elements encountered in the world of the self. “The living room, the bed, the wardrobe, the wall clock and the mirror are recipients of the imaginary” (Baudrillard, 1969, 27). Their use inside our home is more than decor and convenience. The fittings reflect the culture, and implementing this when caring for people with dementia is a must. Unfortunately, this information is unknown to the nurses and physicians when visiting the dementia care centres located in some Mexican towns. “Personal objects matter for identity reflection because they own all that is abstaining in human relations and they play a regulative function in everyday existence, obsessions disappear in them, forces are collected by them making them ours” (Baudrillard, 1969, 102). Even the most insignificant piece could revive and stimulate passions. Caregivers, nurses, and doctors said, “Everything could trigger a memory” but the observed experts are still using the same kind of objects and stimuli. Therefore, it seems that they cannot apply other things; even they said, “Everything could trigger a memory”.
Digital Storytelling Experiences and Outcomes with Different Recording Media: An Exploratory Case Study with Older Adults
Published in Journal of Technology in Human Services, 2020
Diogenis Alexandrakis, Konstantinos Chorianopoulos, Nikolaos Tselios
The interviewees mentioned that their recorded memories can be used as life lessons to others, a finding that is also confirmed in the literature (Chonody & Wang, 2013; McAdams et al., 1993; Webster, 1997). The life periods that those events took place were mostly their childhood and the first period of adulthood, which is congruent with the "reminiscence bump", a phenomenon which refers to the tendency of people to recall more memories from the period of their life between 10 and 30 years of age (Glück & Bluck, 2007). Similar to Lyubomirsky et al.'s (2006) findings, participants had a positive emotional state after recording unpleasant experiences. Some stories were related to participants' home places, while other categories were achievements or adventures they had lived and friends that had passed away. Perhaps the last one, among others, could be also seen as a means for intimacy maintenance or even to get accustomed to the idea of one's own mortality (Webster, 1997). This fact, combined with a participant’s desire for including his mother in the preferable audience of a story, reminded us of the literature related to digital technologies for legacy and bereavement (Brubaker & Callison-Burch, 2016; Hausknecht et al., 2019; Staley, 2014).
Bringing Order to Life: Temporal Order Effects during the Recall of Important Autobiographical Memories in Young and Old Adults
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2023
Lisa Nusser, Tabea Wolf, Daniel Zimprich
high number of important events from adolescence and young adulthood, a phenomenon known as the reminiscence bump (e.g., Koppel & Berntsen, 2015; Rubin & Schulkind, 1997; Zimprich & Wolf, 2016), important AMs are typically distributed across the whole lifespan. Based on these findings, it appears as if once participants – especially older ones – have been informed about the autobiographical memory task (e.g., recall of a specific number of important AMs), they may set up a retrieval plan that makes sure that they retrieve events from different lifetime periods rather than from one lifetime period only (see also Nusser et al., 2022).