And we perceive it to be highly influential over the course of our lives. Second, the memories they summoned to support each “I am” statement should constellate around the age at which they believed the “I am” statement started to apply.Ī delightfully named duo of scientists, Judith Gluck and Susan Bluck, have proposed that the convergence of three qualities can make an event indelible in our minds. First, participants should frequently date the unfurling of their “I am” statements to young adulthood. If it’s true that we remember more assiduously during bursts of self-making-and that these self-making periods tend to span our late teens and early 20s-a few things should happen, the researchers reasoned. Finally, the volunteers were told to pinpoint as best they could the ages at which their three personality traits surfaced. Then they were instructed to pick three statements and come up with 10 memories that seemed relevant to each. Participants were asked to complete 20 “I am” statements (e.g., “I am quick-tempered” “I am a mother”). Noting that developmental psychologists have isolated the second and third decades as times of identity formation, they gathered a group of volunteers and tried to map the emergence of their self-perceptions. To test this theory, a team of scientists from England’s University of Leeds devised a clever experiment. Or perhaps because we are reluctant, collectively, to acknowledge that our time on earth will contain suffering as well as pleasure.) Most of the memories that arise during the reminiscence bump also have a positive valence such results would seem to support the idea that our recall strategies depend at least partially on socially inflected hunches about what the typical life entails. (Why happy? Perhaps because joyful scenarios are more fun to rehearse and also help us regulate our moods. According to the researchers, the benchmark moments in life scripts (called “slots”) have two relevant features: They’re usually happy-childbirth, one’s wedding day-and they occur with greater frequency during one’s 20s and late teens. They defined the life script as a culturally conditioned storyline of events that make up a skeletal life course-and claimed that people often consult such a template when asked to remember their pasts.

In 2002, following in the footsteps of the narrative theorists, Berntsen and David Rubin advanced a “life script” account of the reminiscence bump.

80s childhood memories