Remembering our darkest moments: Reminiscence bumps for highly negative life events.

Prior research has shown that the lifetime age distribution of adults' personal memories peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood, and that this reminiscence bump is apparent primarily for positive rather than negative events. Inspired by sociological research on the crime-age curve, four new studies tested the idea that adults' negative memories of moral transgressions and behavioral missteps also would show a reminiscence bump. A secondary goal was to determine if the ages and content of actual memories recounted by older adults aligned closely with people's expectations for memories provided by an imaginary "typical" older adult.

Adults' memories of childhood cluster in the year of a residential move.

When adults are asked to recall personal past events, transitional episodes occurring in late adolescence and early adulthood are especially likely to be remembered. In addition, recent research has shown that older adults' memories of middle adulthood tend to cluster around the transitional event of moving to a new residence. In the present research, adults recalled five memories of events that occurred between ages 7 and 13, and they subsequently identified family moves that occurred during the same age interval.

A deeper dive into the reminiscence bump: further evidence for the life script hypothesis.

When older adults are asked to recall personal events that occurred at any point in their lives, memories from late adolescence and early adulthood are overrepresented, forming a . Thematic analyses have indicated that the bump memories that emerge in response to such prompts frequently represent milestone events that are consistent with cultural life scripts. This study employed a novel method that explicitly targeted only memories of events occurring during late adolescence and early adulthood, allowing in-depth exploration of the contents and potential organising principles associated with these memories.

What do you remember about Captain Jon's visit?: Parent-child conversations and children's memory for a science lesson.

Previous research on parent-child conversations about personal and school events has consistently demonstrated positive relationships between parents' elaborative questioning and preschool/kindergarten children's event memory. This study examined whether similarly positive relationships would be evident in school-age children. Kindergarten, 2nd/3rd-grade, and 5th/6th-grade children participated in a classroom science lesson about flight.