1Department of Psychology, Cornell University.
Psychol Sci. 2013 Oct;24(10):2057-68. doi: 10.1177/0956797613486486. Epub 2013 Sep 4.
Autobiographical memories are disproportionately recalled for events in late adolescence and early adulthood, a phenomenon called the reminiscence bump. Previous studies on music have found autobiographical memories and life-long preferences for music from this period. In the present study, we probed young adults' personal memories associated with top hits over 5-and-a-half decades, as well as the context of their memories and their recognition of, preference for, quality judgments of, and emotional reactions to that music. All these measures showed the typical increase for music released during the two decades of their lives. Unexpectedly, we found that the same measures peaked for the music of participants' parents' generation. This finding points to the impact of music in childhood and suggests that these results reflect the prevalence of music in the home environment. An earlier peak occurred for 1960s music, which may be explained by its quality or by its transmission through two generations. We refer to this pattern of musical cultural transmission over generations as cascading reminiscence bumps.
自传体记忆不成比例地回忆起青少年晚期和成年早期的事件，这种现象被称为怀旧高峰。之前关于音乐的研究发现，自传体记忆和终身对这一时期音乐的偏好。在本研究中，我们探究了年轻人与五十多年来的热门歌曲相关的个人记忆，以及他们对这些歌曲的记忆背景、对这些歌曲的认知、偏好、质量判断和情感反应。所有这些措施都表明，与他们生命中二十年里发行的音乐相比，音乐的典型增幅。出乎意料的是，我们发现，对于参与者父母那一辈的音乐，同样的指标达到了峰值。这一发现表明了音乐在儿童时期的影响，并暗示这些结果反映了音乐在家庭环境中的普遍存在。1960 年代的音乐出现了更早的峰值，这可能是由于其质量或通过两代人的传播造成的。我们将这种跨代音乐文化传承的模式称为级联怀旧高峰。
