On the role of familiarity and developmental exposure in music-evoked autobiographical memories

Music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) are typically elicited by music that listeners have heard before. While studies that have directly manipulated music familiarity show that familiar music evokes more MEAMs than music listeners have not heard before, music that is unfamiliar to the listener can also sporadically cue autobiographical memory. Here we examined whether music that sounds familiar even without previous exposure can produce spontaneous MEAMs. Cognitively healthy older adults (N = 75, ages 65-80 years) listened to music clips that were chosen by researchers to be either familiar or unfamiliar (i.e., varying by prior exposure). Participants then disclosed whether the clip elicited a MEAM and later provided self-reported familiarity ratings for each. Self-reported familiarity was positively associated with the occurrence of MEAMs in response to familiar, but not the unfamiliar, music. The likelihood of reporting MEAMs for music released during youth (i.e., the "reminiscence bump") relative to young adulthood (20-25 years) included both music released during participants' adolescence (14-18 years) and middle childhood (5-9 years) once self-reported familiarity was accounted for. These developmental effects could not be accounted for by music-evoked affect. Overall, our results suggest that the phenomenon of MEAMs hinges upon both perceptions of familiarity and prior exposure.