# Popular music and movies as autobiographical memory cues

## TL;DR

This study explores how popular music and movies can trigger personal memories, finding that music is more effective at evoking memories from key life periods.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a normed stimulus set of popular music and movies for cueing autobiographical memories and compares their effectiveness.

## Key findings

- Certain songs and movies are consistently autobiographically salient across a wide age range.
- Music cues show a more pronounced reminiscence bump than movie cues.
- The study provides a valuable resource for researchers using popular media to cue memories.

## Abstract

Research on music-evoked autobiographical memories has grown rapidly in recent years, suggesting that music can be an effective stimulus for cueing memories from one’s life. One challenging aspect of this type of research is creating a stimulus set that is effective at cueing autobiographical memories in a wide range of individuals. The present work sought to address this issue by creating a normed stimulus set of popular music and popular movie cues. In addition to this methodological aim, we had an empirical aim to identify differences between autobiographical memories cued by music and movies. Participants (N = 248) either listened to excerpts of popular music or viewed clips of popular movies. After each stimulus, participants rated it on several dimensions, including emotional valence, emotional arousal, familiarity, and autobiographical salience. Results indicated that certain songs and movies are autobiographically salient across a wide age range of participants. Additionally, we identified that musical cues show a significantly more pronounced reminiscence bump than movie cues, suggesting that music from the reminiscence bump period of life is more effective at triggering memories. Overall, these data provide an important resource for researchers wishing to use popular media to cue autobiographical memories, as well as indicating differences between memories cued by music and movies.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13421-025-01765-2.