What Are Memory Triggers?
Bob passes a street maintenance crew in Oakland,
California, smells melting tar in a pot, and remembers his friends at "tar
beach," on the roof of his Manhattan apartment building.
While stirring gravy in a pan, Joan remembers the warmth of her grandmother's kitchen, two decades before.
Roz smells her daughter's gardenia and is flooded with memories of her own high school prom.
Hasn't something like this happened to you? Almost anything, if experienced under the right conditions, can trigger an autobiographical memory:
A certain sound, smell, taste, touch, sight.
Anything: a feeling, a word, a person, an
idea, a dream, fantasy, object, TV show, photograph, visit, reunion, movie,
an activity, a question, another memory.
Jeffrey's memory trigger: Found in his son's closet
Here's a memory trigger for a magazine editor, age 48. During a game of "catch," the feel and smell of his son's football unexpectedly triggered lovely memories of his boyhood that he later used in his writing. An old toy, book, souvenir, report card or slingshot might have worked as well.
Lilly's memory trigger: Found at an antique store
Triggers are everywhere once we become aware of them. Lilly found this doll in an antique store. It triggered dozens of memories about her childhood home which she is now including in a family history. Using a suggestion in The Memory Triggering Book, she visited pharmacies and markets to find as many products as she could that had been in the bathroom of her childhood. When she smelled Ivory soap, Vicks Vapo-Rub, Fletcher's Castoria, and her father's shaving cream, she was flooded with powerful memories, which she then elaborated in her contribution to her family history.
Geoffrey's memory trigger: Found at his local record store
Music is a powerful trigger for many of us--whether we sang, played an instrument, or simply listened. Songs from early childhood or school years can trigger memories of a particular time and place, and of incidents we associate to certain music. Some tips for finding triggering music:
1. At a large record store, search for collections of recordings from the year when you were a senior in high school.
2. Ask your parents what they listened to before you were six years old, and try to find a collection from those years. While you probably won't know the names of those pieces, they may trigger memories anyway.
Rose's memory trigger of the 30s and 40s