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.

What happened in kindergarten? Mother-child conversations about life story chapters.

Research indicates that adults form life story chapters, representations of extended time periods that include people, places and activities. Life chapter memories are distinct from episodic memories and have implications for behaviour, self and mental health, yet little is known about their development during childhood. Two exploratory studies examined parent-child conversations about life chapters.

Talking after school: Parents' conversational styles and children's memory for a science lesson.

A scientist taught 40 4- to 6-year-old children an interactive science lesson at school. The same day, children talked about the lesson at home with a parent who was naive to the details of what had transpired at school. Six days later, a researcher interviewed children about objects, activities, and concepts that were part of the lesson.

Mother-child memory conversations and self-construal in Eastern Turkey, Western Turkey and the USA.

Eighty-seven mothers and their four-year-old children from Eastern Turkey (N = 32 pairs), Western Turkey (N = 30 pairs) and the USA (N = 25 pairs) participated in a study of mother-child memory talk as a reflection of mothers' self construal, in view of differences in the function of memory talk across cultures. Mother-child pairs were audio-recorded while talking about shared past and anticipated future events. Mothers completed the Balanced Integration-Differentiation questionnaire measure of self-construal and were scored as high or low on individuation and relatedness orientations.