The breadth and mnemonic consequences of the youth bias

Abstract

We have recently demonstrated the existence of the youth bias, referring to a tendency to favor 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, US 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.Notice: This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 4, 90-92. DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2015.01.002 3 The Breadth and Mnemonic Consequences of the Youth Bias The Youth BiasWe have recently demonstrated that individuals demonstrate a youth bias, referring to a tendency to favor the period of 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 (Koppel & Berntsen, 2014a). The youth bias integrates two discrete lines of research. The first research tradition incorporated into the youth bias concerns work demonstrating that the period of adolescence and early adulthood (e.g., ages 11 to 30) has a privileged status in human memory and cognition. This is reflected, for instance, in the reminiscence bump, wherein middle-aged and older adults demonstrate preferential memory for events of this period. The bump is found in both autobiographical memory (Rubin, Wetzler, & Nebes, 1986; for a review, including a demonstration of the shifting location of the bump according to the method used to cue memories, see Koppel & Berntsen, 2015) and memory for public events (e.g., Schuman & Scott, 1989; for a review, including a delineation of exceptions to the effect,...

Life happens when you are young: Reminiscence bump in cultural life scripts regardless of number of events elicited.

“…Overall, our results support the notion of a general youth bias, as proposed by Koppel and Berntsen (2014;2016a), because they illustrate that the bump in cultural life scripts found in earlier studies cannot be due to the small number of events elicited. Rather, our findings show that participants dwell on events expected to happen during the first three decades in life even when asked to provide many events.…”

“…6 (3), 337-342. DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.07.004 7 Additionally, recent research has found a more general "youth bias", whereby non-personal events -specifically, important public events -are expected to occur in adolescence and early adulthood (Koppel & Berntsen, 2014, 2016a. For instance, Koppel and Berntsen (2014) asked participants to estimate when the most important public event of a hypothetical person's life would most likely occur.…”

Life-span retrieval of public events: Reminiscence bump for high-impact events, recency for others

“…One significant issue was that this latter finding was true only for sporting events, and not for death of public figures or U.S. presidential elections. This was, they argued, because for the other two events one or two major events would lead to high recall overriding any effect of youth bias (Koppel & Berntsen, 2016a). These findings are potentially very important because they present a novel conceptual explanation of the bump for public events.…”

“…These ratings were not different for participants who were in their late adolescence or early adulthood than those who were younger and older. Although there is no clear evidence that life scripts exist for public events (Janssen, 2015;Koppel & Berntsen, 2015b) the concept of youth bias, which refers to a cognitive bias in which individuals expect important public events to take place during one's late adolescence/early adulthood, is relevant , 2016a. Research not only showed that people disproportionately expect the most important public event in a typical life to occur during an individual's young adulthood but also extended this effect to specific type of public events such as deaths of public figures, U.S. presidential elections, and sporting events (Koppel & Berntsen, 2016a).…”

“…Although there is no clear evidence that life scripts exist for public events (Janssen, 2015;Koppel & Berntsen, 2015b) the concept of youth bias, which refers to a cognitive bias in which individuals expect important public events to take place during one's late adolescence/early adulthood, is relevant , 2016a. Research not only showed that people disproportionately expect the most important public event in a typical life to occur during an individual's young adulthood but also extended this effect to specific type of public events such as deaths of public figures, U.S. presidential elections, and sporting events (Koppel & Berntsen, 2016a). Most importantly, they found a correlation between people's expectations about the timing of important public events and the timing of most important public event in the same individuals' lives, suggesting that youth bias might serve as a retrieval frame for public events.…”