Flashbulb

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Flashbulb

• Memories

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Definition of Flashbulb Memory

• Enduring, detailed, high resolution recollections
• Brown and Kulik speculated that humans are
  biologically equipped for survival purposes to
  print the most dramatic events in memory.
• Flashbulb memories are triggered by events that
  are new to a person, important, surprising, and
  emotional.

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Pavlov

• Novel, unique events are learned more readily and
  form longer-lasting memories than familiar
  events.
• Traumatic events can lead to one-trial learning.
• When extraordinary events contain strong
  emotional components, people form flashbulb
  memories.

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Research

• Researchers asked people about their memories of
  national tragedies, for example the assassination
  of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
• Many people could remember where they were, what
  they were doing, and how they felt when they
  learned that President John F. Kennedy had been
  shot.

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Problem with the Research

• No documentation of memories - researchers had no
  way of knowing whether the memories matched the
  actual event.

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McCloskey

• Distributed a questionnaire to subjects a few
  days after the explosion of the space shuttle
  Challenger in 1986, and then again about 9 months
  later.
• Subjects memory for the explosion was good but
  not perfect.

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Another Study

• One out of every four subjects incorrectly
  recalled the memories they had reported 3 years
  earlier.
• Subjects insisted that their memories of the
  event were accurate, even when shown their
  handwritten reports of the event.

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Long Term Memory

• Flashbulb memory research is also part of
  research on Long Term Memory
• Long Term Memory is an unlimited capacity storage
  that can hold information over long periods of
  time. While sensory and short term memory decay
  rapidly, LTM can store information indefinitely.
• Some information may remain in LTM across an
  entire lifetime.

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Hypotheses

• One hypothesis is that all information stored in
  long term memory is Permanent.
• Forgetting occurs because people cannot always
  retrieve needed information from LTM.
• Another hypothesis is that some memories stored
  in LTM do vanish forever.

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Evidence

• Flashbulb memories seem permanent, so it seems
  that long term memory is permanent.
• Hypnotized subjects who have been regressed back
  to early childhood have described in remarkable
  detail events that they thought they had
  forgotten.
• These recoveries of lost memories through
  hypnosis suggest that forgetting is due to poor
  retrieval.

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Problems with evidence

• Flashbulb memories become less detailed and
  complete with time.
• When hypnosis-recovered memories have been
  checked, they have often turned out to be
  inaccurate.
• Hypnotized subjects often make things up and
  distort recollections to be consistent with their
  current beliefs
• There is no convincing evidence that all memories
  are stored permanently.

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Inaccuracy of Flashbulb Memories

• Cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser was
  listening to a baseball game on the radio when
  Pearl Harbor was bombed. The announcer broke in
  with the alarming news. Years later, he realize
  that this memory was impossible, because no
  baseball games were played on December 7, 1941
• While some flashbulb memories are remarkably
  accurate, others are not.

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Charles Weaver

• Weaver instructed his students to intentionally
  remember the details surrounding their next
  chance encounter with a roommate or friend,
  telling them they would be asked to report these
  details later.
• By coincidence, Operation Desert Storm began that
  night, giving students an opportunity to form a
  flashbulb memory of the event.
• A year later, Weaver assessed the students
  memories for both the ordinary and extraordinary
  events of the day and found no differences in
  accuracy.