A recurrent topic in collective memory studies is war, more specifically, global wars such as War World II. In this study, we investigate the collective memory of a less global war, the Malvinas-Falklands War between Argentina and Britain. The war and the territorial claims that motivated it still figure in public discourse in Argentina, but less dramatically in Britain. As a result, the generational cohort effects characterizing intergenerational collective memory might be less marked among Argentines. To test this claim, we assessed the memories of Argentines and Britons for the Malvinas War, employing both free and cued recall, across two generations and different political ideologies. Many of the generational differences established in the extant empirical studies were found but were generally less marked for Argentines. Ideology had little effect. The results are discussed in terms of how continued engagement with the causes of a war can mitigate generational differences.

In both casual conversations and interview settings, people may be required to provide details of instances that were similar to other experiences. When this happens repeatedly, consistency across reports is often taken as a proxy for credibility. However, processes of schema formation and interference due to similarity make recall and accurate source attribution of details to specific instances challenging. We investigated the accuracy and consistency of recall in these contexts in a re-analysis of five studies. Confusions of details were widespread (1) across instances-participants frequently attributed the origin of details to incorrect instances, but also (2) across repeated retrieval attempts-participants frequently changed parts of their reports. There was, however, a clear pattern of primacy and recency effects: Recall of the first and final instances was more accurate and consistent than recall of the middle instances. We discuss potential mechanisms underlying these effects as well as their practical implications.

In today's globalized world, we frequently encounter unfamiliar events that we may have difficulty comprehending - and in turn remembering - due to a lack of appropriate schemata. This research investigated schema effects in a situation where participants established a complex new schema for an unfamiliar type of story through exposure to four variations. We found that immediate recall increased across subsequent stories and that distortions occurred less frequently - participants built on the emerging schema and gradually established representations of parts of the story that were initially transformed. In recall with delays increasing up to 1 month, quantitative measures indicated forgetting while distortions increased. The second focus of this research was on content and order deviation effects on recall. The content deviation, in contrast with previous repeated-event research, was not remembered well and was associated with lower recall; the order deviation had a similar (but expected) effect. We discuss discrepancies between results of this study and previous literature, which had focused on schemata for familiar events, in relation to stages of schema development: it seems that in unfamiliar repeated events, a complex new schema is in the early stages of formation, where the lack of attentional resources limits active processing of deviations.

The reminiscence bump most commonly refers to the disproportionate number of autobiographical memories, in adults aged ≥40 years, dating from youth and early adulthood. Whereas the bump in autobiographical memory has primarily been studied by psychologists, it has been paralleled in the sociology literature in a spike in recall for public events that occurred at a similar period of the lifespan. This chapter reviews findings illustrating that the temporal location of the bump (in autobiographical memory) and the frequency with which it is found (in memory for public events) vary according to the cueing method used to elicit the memories. For instance, in autobiographical memory, the bump is earlier when memories are elicited through cue words than when memories are elicited through requests for important memories. In memory for public events, the bump is more frequently attained when recall is tested through open-ended recall than when it is tested through knowledge tests. It is argued that these findings indicate that retrieval processes play a large role in the bump in each domain, and therefore challenge most existing theoretical accounts, which stress encoding processes. The relevant retrieval processes in each domain are then discussed. Finally, the implications of the reviewed findings, in particular those concerning autobiographical memory, are discussed as they relate to models of the organization of autobiographical memory.

Cultural life scripts are representations of a prototypical life course within a culture, consisting of a shared understanding of culturally important transitional events and their timing. Cultural life scripts contain a "bump" for events in adolescence and early adulthood, mirroring the reminiscence bump in autobiographical memory. However, the bump in the cultural life script might be due to the typical methodology used, namely generating only the seven most important events in a prototypical life, thus prioritizing early events. Here, we tested whether expanding the number of events would level the bump in the cultural life script. Four groups of 100 participants each generated a cultural life script with four, seven, 15 or 25 events. Across groups, there was a clear bump in adolescence and early adulthood, showing that the bump in cultural life scripts is highly robust and not an artefact of methodology.

The reminiscence bump is the increased proportion of autobiographical memories from youth and early adulthood observed in adults over 40. It is one of the most robust findings in autobiographical memory research. Although described as a single period of increased memories, a recent meta-analysis which reported the beginning and ending ages of the bump from individual studies found that different classes of cues produce distinct bumps that vary in size and temporal location. The bump obtained in response to cue words is both smaller and located earlier in the lifespan than the bump obtained when important memories are requested. The bump obtained in response to odor cues is even earlier. This variation in the size and location of the reminiscence bump argues for theories based primarily on retrieval rather than encoding and retention, which most current theories stress. Furthermore, it points to the need to develop theories of autobiographical memory that account for this flexibility in the memories retrieved.

We have recently demonstrated the existence of the youth bias, referring to a tendency to favour adolescence and early adulthood over other lifetime periods when making inferences about the timing of important public events across the lifespan of a typical individual within one's culture. The youth bias integrates two discrete lines of research, that is, the literature on the privileged status of adolescence and early adulthood in human memory and cognition, and the literature on cognitive biases. Here we first examined whether the youth bias holds for specific categories of public events (i.e., deaths of public figures, United States presidential elections, and sporting events). We then investigated the possible role of the youth bias in structuring recall for public events, by probing, within subjects, for the relation between: (1) these expectations of the timing, in a typical person's life, of the most important exemplar from each public event category, and (2) the age at which the cited event occurred on a recall question asking participants to cite the most important exemplar, in their own lifetime, from each category. We found a youth bias for each category. Additionally, responses to the youth bias question were correlated with the age at which the recalled event occurred, but only where particularly salient historical events did not play a central role in driving recall (i.e., for sporting events). We conclude that the youth bias holds across different types of public events and provides a default structure for organizing recall of public events.

The reminiscence bump is the increased proportion of autobiographical memories from youth and early adulthood observed in adults over 40. It is one of the most robust findings in autobiographical-memory research. Although described as a single period from which there are more memories, a recent meta-analysis that reported the beginning and ending ages of the bump from individual studies found that different classes of cues produce distinct bumps that vary in size and temporal location. The bump obtained in response to cue words is both smaller and located earlier in the life span than the bump obtained when important memories are requested. The bump obtained in response to odor cues is even earlier. This variation in the size and temporal location of the reminiscence bump argues for theories based primarily on retrieval rather than encoding and retention, which most current theories stress. Furthermore, it points to the need to develop theories of autobiographical memory that account for this flexibility in the memories retrieved.

The reminiscence bump is the disproportionate number of autobiographical memories dating from adolescence and early adulthood. It has often been ascribed to a consolidation of the mature self in the period covered by the bump. Here we stripped away factors relating to the characteristics of autobiographical memories per se, most notably factors that aid in their encoding or retention, by asking students to generate imagined word-cued and imagined 'most important' autobiographical memories of a hypothetical, prototypical 70-year-old of their own culture and gender. We compared the distribution of these fictional memories with the distributions of actual word-cued and most important autobiographical memories in a sample of 61-70-year-olds. We found a striking similarity between the temporal distributions of the imagined memories and the actual memories. These results suggest that the reminiscence bump is largely driven by constructive, schematic factors at retrieval, thereby challenging most existing theoretical accounts.

Expectations of control put forth by societal norms impose a constant influence on goal perception. To examine the influence of culture on perception of personal goals, 124 Middle Easterners and 128 Scandinavians rated their perceived locus of control, generated goals and evaluated goal characteristics. Findings show several cultural and gender differences, most notably in perceived locus of control, unhappiness despite goal achievement and adherence to cultural life script. Many differences were qualified by interactions, suggesting that Middle Eastern men deviate from Middle Eastern women and Scandinavians of both sexes. The Middle Eastern men demonstrated greater ambivalence regarding goal achievement, and contrary to previous findings from other cultural samples, they also showed a significant positive association between internal and external control. Furthermore, goals generated by Middle Easterners showed a greater overlap with their imagined future events, and were largely represented by life script events. These findings are consistent with the view that especially Middle Eastern men experience a greater responsibility for the fulfilment of culturally defined goals. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fagin, Cyr, and Hirst provide an informed and insightful application of the social memory literature to the important question of how memories of sexual abuse may be re-shaped, both over the short term and long term, by communication with others, as well as with oneself. In the following commentary, we outline several respects in which we believe that the application of this literature to memories of sexual abuse, particularly over the long term, is still open to debate. In particular, we focus on induced forgetting and social contagion for such memories, as well as the application of the social memory literature to intrusive involuntary memories of trauma. Where applicable, we offer suggestions for future research that may contribute towards addressing the limitations of the existing literature. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Janssen asserts that, in a recent paper, we introduced the concept of a cultural life script for public events, in the form of the youth bias. Moreover, he contends that we claimed to have found evidence for such a life script. Correspondingly, he frames his own failure to find evidence for a life script for public events as a rebuttal of our paper. We demonstrate, however, that the youth bias is in fact conceptually and methodologically distinct from life scripts. We conclude that we therefore deserve no credit for the concept of a cultural life script for public events and that Janssen's critique of our paper rests on a misinterpretation of our central concept. Lastly, we argue that, although Janssen may not have found evidence for a life script for public events, his study serves as a confirmation and extension of the youth bias. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this reply to the three commentaries on our target article, we follow up and elaborate upon several points raised by the commentary writers.In particular, we highlight their comments on issues concerning (1) the reminiscence bump in word-cued versus important memories, (2) the reminiscence bump outside of autobiographical memory, and (3) other effects of cueing on the temporal location of the bump in autobiographical memory.We conclude that our demonstration, in the target article, of two different bumps at two different locations,one bump for word-cued memories and another bump for important memoriesappears to be just the tip of the iceberg, as there is good reason to suspect that the location of the bump is sensitive to a wide range of manipulations of cueing procedure.We suggest that researchers should take this apparent flexibility of the bump into account in future studies on the phenomenon.

The reminiscence bump refers to the disproportionate number of individuals’ autobiographical memories that date from young adulthood. A similar bump is found in cultural life scripts: When people are asked to nominate and date major transitional events in a typical life course in their culture, a disproportionate number of the events cited are likewise expected to occur in young adulthood. Across two online studies, we tested whether these effects reflect a broader tendency to ascribe most important events to young adulthood. Specifically, we probed, in adult USA samples, for when individuals expect the most important public event of a typical person's life to take place. Although the occurrence of such public events should be randomly distributed across the lifespan, we found a bump in young adulthood. We found this bump in both subjective (Study 1; probing cultural expectations for the expected timing of the public event that a typical person considers to be the most important of their lifetime) and objective (Study 2; probing cultural expectations for the expected timing of the objectively most important public event of a typical person's lifetime) conditions. We term this set of cultural expectations the youth bias and discuss its implications for human cognition.

Speakers reshape listeners' memories through at least two discrete means: (1) social contagion and (2) socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting (SS-RIF). Three experiments explored how social relationships between speaker and listener moderate these conversational effects, focusing specifically on two speaker characteristics, expertise and trustworthiness. We examined their effect on SS-RIF and contrasted, within-subjects, their effects on both SS-RIF and the previously studied social contagion. Experiments 1 and 2 explored the effects of perceived expertise; Experiment 3 explored trust. We found (1) that speakers who were perceived as experts induced greater levels of social contagion and lower levels of SS-RIF than non-expert speakers, and (2) that, likewise, trust in the speaker had similar mnemonic consequences, in that neutral speakers induced more social contagion and less SS-RIF than untrustworthy speakers. These findings suggest that how speakers shape listeners' memories depends on the social dynamic that exists between speaker and listener.

The reminiscence bump has been found for both autobiographical memories and memories of public events. However, there have been few comparisons of the bump across each type of event. In the current study, therefore, we compared the bump for autobiographical memories versus the bump for memories of public events. We did so between-subjects, through two cueing methods administered within-subjects, the cue word method and the important memories method. For word-cued memories, we found a similar bump from ages 5 to 19 for both types of memories. However, the bump was more pronounced for autobiographical memories. For most important memories, we found a bump from ages 20 to 29 in autobiographical memory, but little discernible age pattern for public events. Rather, specific public events (e.g., the Fall of the Berlin Wall) dominated recall, producing a chronological distribution characterised by spikes in citations according to the years these events occurred. Follow-up analyses suggested that the bump in most important autobiographical memories was a function of the cultural life script. Our findings did not yield support for any of the dominant existing accounts of the bump as underlying the bump in word-cued memories.

The reminiscence bump has generally been assessed through either (1) the cue word method, or (2) several related methods which we refer to under the umbrella of the important memories method. Here we provide a review of the literature demonstrating that the temporal location of the bump varies systematically according to cueing method, with the mean range of the bump located from 8.7 to 22.5 years of age for word-cued memories, versus 15.1 to 27.9 for important memories. This finding has hitherto been under-acknowledged, as existing theoretical accounts of the bump generally hold its location to be stable across cueing methods. We therefore re-evaluate existing theoretical accounts of the bump in light of these varying locations, addressing each account's consistency with (1) the respective bumps found through each method taken individually, and (2) the sensitivity of the bump's location to cueing method. (C) 2014 Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

We examined and compared the predictors of autobiographical memory (AM) consistency and event memory accuracy across two publicly documented yet disparate public events: the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States on January 20th 2009, and the emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549, off the coast of Manhattan, on January 15th 2009. We tracked autobiographical and event memories for both events, with assessments taking place within 2½ weeks of both events (Survey 1), and again between 3½ and 4 months after both events (Survey 2). In a series of stepwise regressions we found that the psychological variables of recalled emotional intensity and personal importance/centrality predicted AM consistency and event memory accuracy for the inauguration. Conversely, the rehearsal variables of covert rehearsal and media attention predicted, respectively, AM consistency and event memory accuracy for the plane landing. We conclude from these findings that different factors may underlie autobiographical and event memory for personally and culturally significant events (e.g., the inauguration), relative to noteworthy, yet less culturally significant, events (e.g., the plane landing).