The reminiscence bump is blind to blindness: Evidence from sound- and odor-evoked autobiographical memoryShow others and affiliations
Number of Authors: 62020 (English)In: Consciousness and Cognition, ISSN 1053-8100, E-ISSN 1090-2376, Vol. 78, article id 102876Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The reminiscence bump is the disproportionally high reporting of autobiographical memories from adolescence and early adulthood and is typically observed when memories are evoked by cues, such as words, pictures, and sounds. However, when odors are used the bump shifts to early childhood. Although these findings indicate that sensory modality affects the bump, the influence of the individual's sensory function on the reminiscence bumps is unknown. We examined the reminiscence bumps of sound- and odor-evoked autobiographical memories of early blind and sighted individuals, since early blindness implies considerable effects on sensory experience. Despite differences in sensory experience between blind and sighted individuals, the groups displayed similar age distributions of both sound- and odor-evoked memories. The auditory bump spanned the first two decades of life, whereas the olfactory bump was once again found in early childhood. These results demonstrate that the reminiscence bumps are robust to fundamental differences in sensory experience.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. Vol. 78, article id 102876
Keywords [en]
autobiographical memory, blindness, environmental sounds, olfactory bump, reminiscence bump
National Category
Psychology
Research subject
Psychology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-179528DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2019.102876ISI: 000513296300005PubMedID: 31923883OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-179528DiVA, id: diva2:1412642
Note
This work was supported by a program grant entitled ”Our unique sense of smell” awarded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences(M14-0375:1) to ML. This work was also supported by funds from the Swedish Research Council (2016-02100) to MN and from the Swedish Research Council (2014-240 and 2018-01603) to AA.
2020-03-062020-03-062022-03-23Bibliographically approved