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Previous research has found that music brings back more vivid and emotional autobiographical memories than various other retrieval cues. However, such studies have often been low in ecological validity and constrained by relatively limited cue selection and predominantly young adult samples. Here, we compared music to food as cues for autobiographical memories in everyday life in young and older adults. In two separate four‐day periods, 39 younger (ages 18–34) and 39 older (ages 60–77) adults recorded their music‐ and food‐evoked autobiographical memories in paper diaries. Across both age groups, music triggered more frequent autobiographical memories, a greater proportion of involuntary memories, and memories rated as more personally important in comparison to food cues. Age differences impacted music‐ and food‐evoked memories similarly, with older adults consistently recalling older and less specific memories, which they rated as more positive, vivid, and rehearsed. However, young and older adults did not differ in the number or involuntary nature of their recorded memories. This work represents an important step in understanding the phenomenology of naturally occurring music‐evoked autobiographical memories across adulthood and provides new insights into how and why music may be a more effective trigger for personally valued memories than certain other everyday cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autobiographical memory and personal life stories are typically conceived as memories about the self. However, personal life stories often contain information about important events from other people's lives. Sometimes those memories become an important part of our own life stories, illuminating the role that other people play in remembering our personal past. In this study, we examined the extent to which memories of important life story events are self-focused (e.g., I moved to Japan) or other-focused (e.g., My child graduated from college). Participants from Mexico, Greenland, China, Denmark and the United States recalled and dated seven autobiographical memories of important personal life story events. Participants also rated the memories for importance and emotional valence. The memories were coded as self- or other-focused. Participants recalled mainly self-focused memories. However, Danish and Chinese participants recalled about 20% other-focused memories. Danish participants recalled negative events about their parents, whereas Chinese participants recalled positive events about their children. Self-focused and other-focused memories differed in their emotional valence and lifespan distribution, but not in importance. The findings show that individuals remember other-focused memories and also incorporate them into their own personal life stories. Conceptual implications for autobiographical memory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated how people think about their personal life and their country by testing how participants in the U.S. and China think about personal and collective events in the past and future. Using a fluency task, we replicated prior research in showing that participants in the U.S. had a positivity bias toward their personal future and a negativity bias toward their country's future. In contrast, participants in China did not display a positivity or negativity bias toward either their personal or collective future. This result suggests that the valence dissociation between personal and collective future thinking is not universal. Additionally, when people considered the past in addition to the future, they displayed similar valence patterns for both temporal periods, providing evidence that people think about the past and the future similarly. We suggest political and cultural differences (such as dialectical thought) as potential explanations for the differences between countries in future thinking and memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]