Most of us have made best memories by age 25
By the time most people are 25, they have made the most important memories of their lives, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire.
Researchers at UNH have found that when older adults were asked to tell their life stories, they overwhelmingly highlighted the central influence of life transitions in their memories. Many of these transitions, such as marriage and having children, occurred early in life.
“When people look back over their lives and recount their most important memories, most divide their life stories into chapters defined by important moments that are universal for many: a physical move, attending college, a first job, marriage, military experience, and having children,” said Kristina Steiner, a doctoral student in psychology at UNH and the study’s lead researcher.
The research team also included David Pillemer, Dr. Samuel E. Paul Professor of Developmental Psychology at UNH; Dorthe Kirkegaard Thomsen, professor of psychology and behavioral sciences at the University of Aarhus (Denmark); and Andrew Minigan, an undergraduate student in psychology at UNH. The researchers present the results of their study, “The reminiscence bump in older adults’ life story transitions,” in the journal Memory.
In the first study to use a naturalistic approach by collecting free-flowing life stories, researchers spoke with 34 members of an active retirement community, ages 59 to 92. All the participants were white, and 76 percent had earned at least an undergraduate degree. Participants were asked to tell their life stories in 30 minutes. One week later, participants divided their life stories into self-defined “chapters.”
In the UNH study, researchers found a pronounced “reminiscence bump” between ages 17 and 24, when many people defined chapters of their life story beginning and ending. A reminiscence bump is a period of time between the ages of 15 and 30 when many memories, positive and negative, expected and unexpected, are recalled.
“Many studies have consistently found that when adults are asked to think about their lives and report memories, remembered events occurring between the ages of 15 to 30 are over-represented. I wanted to know why this might be. Why don’t adults report more memories from the ages of 30 to 70? What is it about the ages of 15 to 30 that make them so much more memorable?” Steiner asked.
“Our life narratives are our identity. By looking at life narratives, researchers can predict levels of well-being and psychological adjustment in adults. Clinical therapists can use life narrative therapy to help people work through issues and problems in their lives by helping them see patterns and themes,” said Steiner, who studies autobiographical memory.
Memory
First published Tue Mar 11, 2003; substantive revision Wed Feb 3, 2010
‘Memory’ labels a diverse set of cognitive capacities by which we retain information and reconstruct past experiences, usually for present purposes. Memory is one of the most important ways by which our histories animate our current actions and experiences. Most notably, the human ability to conjure up long-gone but specific episodes of our lives is both familiar and puzzling, and is a key aspect of personal identity. Memory seems to be a source of knowledge. We remember experiences and events which are not happening now, so memory differs from perception. We remember events which really happened, so memory is unlike pure imagination. Yet, in practice, there can be close interactions between remembering, perceiving, and imagining. Remembering is often suffused with emotion, and is closely involved in both extended affective states such as love and grief, and socially significant practices such as promising and commemorating. It is essential for much reasoning and decision-making, both individual and collective. It is connected in obscure ways with dreaming. Some memories are shaped by language, others by imagery. Much of our moral and social life depends on the peculiar ways in which we are embedded in time. Memory goes wrong in mundane and minor, or in dramatic and disastrous ways.
Although an understanding of memory is likely to be important in making sense of the continuity of the self, of the relation between mind and body, and of our experience of time, it has often been curiously neglected by philosophers. This entry’s primary focus is on that part of contemporary philosophical discussion of memory which is continuous with the development of theories in the cognitive and social sciences: attention to these interdisciplinary fields of memory studies is driving renewed work on the topic. Many problems about memory require us to cross philosophical traditions and subdisciplines, touching on phenomenology, philosophy of psychology, epistemology, social theory, and ethics at once. The bibliography includes suggested readings on the history of theories of memory.
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The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state’s flagship public institution, enrolling 12,300 undergraduate and 2,200 graduate students.
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Kristina Steiner
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330-472-9284
University of New Hampshire