Brown and Kulik suggest that flashbulb memory is caused by the physiological emotional arousal (activity in the amygdala) Strengths vs. Weaknesses: it’s not necessarily accurate in regard to details Neisser and Harsch (1992) They carried out a real life study on people’s memory of the Challenger disaster.
Mary Howes, Geoffrey O'Shea, in Human Memory, 2014
Flashbulb Memories
Another area of research concerning emotion and recall involves the phenomenon known as flashbulb memories. In 1899, Colgrove reported a study in which 179 participants were asked to describe their recollections of the moment when they heard of President Lincoln’s death, 33 years earlier. A striking finding was the extent to which these individuals remembered where they had been (context) when the news came. A typical response was, “I was setting out a rose bush by the door. My husband came in the yard and told me.” This participant was 79 years old.
Brown and Kulik (1977) pursued the issue further, positing that unexpected news carrying very strong emotion might produce an atypical form of memory. They tested their participants concerning recall of the moment they had heard of the assassinations of various prominent figures, and also moments of shock based on personal news. President Kennedy’s death, in particular, elicited memories of context (in all but one participant), and sometimes the recollection of trivial sensory details present at the time. A colleague of Brown’s, for instance, remembered that when he had heard the news he was walking up some steps at his college, and he could still recall the particular feeling of the steps under his feet 13 years later.
With regard to context, of course we often recall the context of where we heard some news, for a period of time. But normally this form of recollection does not last long: Larson (1992) found that, in his own case, context information for nonemotional news was at chance level after 2 months. Certainly it is not retained for the 30 years recorded in Colgrove’s data.
A large number of studies were conducted following the Brown and Kulik article, but these often involved the individual hearing of some public disaster or some good or bad news, having an emotional reaction, and either recalling or misrecalling the relevant context after a relatively short period of time, ranging from 6 months to 3 years, but not decades (Bohannon, 1988; Christiansen & Engelberg, 1999; Lee & Brown, 2003; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Schmolck, Buffalo, & Squire, 2000; Wright, 1993). It was noted later by some researchers that these studies might not involve actual flashbulb memories. We hear of disasters on an almost daily basis, and an emotional response to news of this kind will not normally provide the same intense impact as that involved in the murder of a U.S. president. Also, the very long-term retention of context had not been measured. A further issue here is that in the case even of striking disasters, such as the loss of the Challenger space shuttle, some individuals may respond with flashbulb memories and others may not, such that the data would reflect a mixture of, possibly, two different kinds of recollection (Gaskell & Wright, 1997).
Brown and Kulik had explicitly noted that flashbulb memories were not photograph-like, in that many details of the context scene weren’t recalled later. They had coined the term flashbulb because of the peculiar property of the memory function catching some trivial sensory element, as if a flashbulb (focusing on some small aspect of the scene) had gone off. There was no implication, though, of retention being like a photograph. It has been widely claimed that flashbulb memories are highly detailed (which might imply a photograph-like process). But it is not clear that the data support this view. Kulik, for instance, remembered the context in which he had heard of Kennedy’s death (13 years after the event), of his teacher crying; however, he did not recall either her hairstyle or her dress. It is hard to see how this could be interpreted as a detailed recollection.
The idea that flashbulb memories include a great deal of information concerning context may have been generated because some completely trivial, sensory content is sometimes retained; the assumption might be that if stimuli as unimportant as the feeling of the steps under your feet, or the pattern of marks on a wall, are remembered, then surely more important imagery would also be remembered. But this is precisely what does not happen with flashbulb recollection.
A final claim made by Brown and Kulik was that flashbulb memories appear to have so great an impact that the content that is retained across time may be strictly accurate, (enabled by a kind of “Now print!” mechanism). Most researchers today believe that this claim has not been supported (Schmolck et al., 2000). A difficulty with interpretation here, though, is that the data showing inaccuracy in context recall may have involved memories that were not of the flashbulb type, as described above. When Bohannon and Symons (1992) examined their participants’ memories of the Challenger disaster, they found that individuals who reported high levels of distress showed significantly more accurate recall of context information than individuals who reported low levels of distress, after a period of 3 years (location at 93% for the high-distress group, and at 18% for low distress group). In addition, Er (2003) tested participants who had been present in the 1999 Marmara earthquake for their recall of the event, and found 100% correct recall of their location after a year, while those who had only heard about the quake showed significantly poorer recall. Still, it might be expected that victims of such a frightening event would retain information concerning it for at least a year, even if no flashbulb effect were present.
Under the view advocated in the present book, given that all memory content involves inference (even if the inference is normally accurate), and the belief that emotional memories are more subject to change than neutral memories, it still seems unlikely that flashbulb recollection would be strictly accurate, in all cases, across extended periods of time. The outcome might be something more like my student’s memory of a white, green, and orange floor, when the original floor had been only white and green.
An extremely important finding in the Bohannon and Symons (1992) study was that the high-distress individuals recalled the context information over time at a higher level than they recalled the semantic information (i.e. what they had actually heard concerning the Challenger disaster). This enhancement of peripheral over central information reverses the normal pattern of adult episodic recall.
Some researchers today hold that flashbulb memories are simply emotional memories, and as such do not differ from other emotional memories. But a case can be made that flashbulb phenomena in fact involve an unusual kind of affect-driven recall. In the experimental studies outlined above, in which emotional content seen in slides was compared with neutral content, participants in the emotional condition recalled the central, “important” information at a relatively high level, but recalled peripheral details poorly. Yet one of the striking properties of flashbulb memories involves the arguably permanent recollection, in some cases, of a few wholly trivial, peripheral details (the feeling of steps under your feet). The argument was made earlier that thematic memories might well include a wider range of happenstance information, associated with a strongly emotional event. But this posited effect also differs from the arbitrary but very strong recollection of just a few, random, sensory details—indeed as if a flashbulb had gone off, but involving a strangely narrow focus.
In short, it is possible that flashbulb memories constitute an unusual form of memory that requires a distinct kind of impact, and that changes the usual patterns seen in the case of both neutral and (most) emotional recollections. The change is that they can, perhaps in their more extreme forms, “stamp in” memory for general context, and also hold and retain random sensory details. Yet the data seem to indicate that recall of the central, important information is not enhanced (note the Bohannon and Symons article described above). This is particularly significant, in that the standard pattern, even in emotional memories, is that important information tends to be retained at a higher level than trivial information. In this, flashbulb memories appear particularly unusual.
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Flashbulb Memories
Over ten years ago, on September 9th 2001, the United States of America was rocked by
an event that would burn itself into the pages of history. Despite the time that has passed since
that tragic day, if asked, most Americans can still recall their exact whereabouts with seemingly
outstanding clarity. Some of these people may even be able to recall some other mundane details
from the moments immediately before and after learning about the stunning events of 9/11.
This phenomenon is called a flashbulb memory. A flashbulb memory was originally defined
as a special type of memory in which a person could remember in vivid detail their specific
circumstances when they discovered some piece of shocking information (Brown & Kulik,
1977). This type of memory is similar to the kind of autobiographical memory that forms in
the moments surrounding a traumatic and specific personal event in an individual’s life, such as
the discovery of a loved one’s death, but instead occurs on a national or even global level. This
type of snapshot memory was once thought to create a vivid image, almost like a photograph,
that was resistant to ordinary memory decay. However, recent studies conducted on flashbulb
memories have unearthed new information, much of which refutes many of the previously held
notions regarding these special memories. Through the use of several literature reviews, this
paper will seek to clarify the development of our modern understanding of flashbulb memories
and to answer such questions as, are flashbulb memories resistant to erosion, are they encoded
differently than ordinary memories and if not, what really makes a flashbulb memory?
Throughout history numerous examples may be found of shocking events which gave
way to the formation of common flashbulb memories. The Lincoln assassination, the Challenger
explosion, and the O.J. Simpson trial are all examples of events that have stunned the world,
finding a permanent place in national memory. Early studies on flashbulb memories began with
Flashbulb Memories
the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the first study of its kind, two Harvard University
researchers distributed questionnaires with questions regarding the participant’s recollection of
the moments surrounding their discovery of the assassination, along with questions about
personally significant events and other high profile news events (Brown & Kulik, 1977).
The findings of this initial study suggested that flashbulb memories were markedly
different from other ordinary memories. In their article, Brown and Kulik suggested that
emotionally salient events that were both consequential and highly shocking had a tendency to
form a pristine image that preserved the scene of discovery. Since flashbulb memories were very
different from other everyday memories, Brown and Kulik postulated that a special mechanism
existed and was involved in the formation of these memories. While they did acknowledge that
many finer details would be lost from these special memories, Brown and Kulik believed that
flashbulb memories would be particularly resistant to decay over time. As the first major study
to investigate flashbulb memories, this study set the foundation for all further research regarding
flashbulb memories and was the authoritative source of information on the subject for nearly a
decade. However, while this study was groundbreaking in empirically establishing the existence
of flashbulb memories, it was a somewhat limited study that would be the source of substantial
debate. The fact that this study did not actually measure the accuracy of the memories or decline
of the quality of the memories over time made Brown and Kulik’s assertion that flashbulb
memories were resistant to fading somewhat presumptive.
Just over ten years after the Brown and Kulik study was published, research conducted
by three John Hopkins University psychologists would bring Brown and Kulik’s original
findings into question. These three psychologists hypothesized that Brown and Kulik were
incorrect in their conclusion that a special mechanism dictated the formation of a flashbulb
memory (McCloskey, Wible, & Cohen, 1988). They did not believe that flashbulb memories
were more likely to be remembered than other personally important memories and were further
inclined to believe that flashbulb memories were no different than any other form of episodic
memory. In the aftermath of the Challenger explosion, the researchers tested their hypothesis by
distributing questionnaires that asked participants to recall how they found out about Challenger,
where they were, what they were doing, and how they felt (McCloskey et al., 1988). The
researchers then had approximately half of the participants re-fill out the questionnaire nine
months later to see if their flashbulb memory had faded at all. They found that while many
people had retained some memories of that day, a significant percentage of the participants had
answers that were more broad, that were inconsistent with their original answers, or who didn’t
remember specific details at all (McCloskey et al., 1988).
The findings of this study suggested the fallibility of flashbulb memories and opposed
the notion that flashbulb memories were formed by special mechanisms. While this study
did measure the changes in the memories over a period of time, it was limited by its lack of a
control. In the article, McCloskey asserts that at their core, flashbulb memories were no different
than any other autobiographical or episodic memories. However, these researchers failed to
collect any sort of control data and as a result, did not have enough empirical evidence to support
this contention. While their findings would suggest that flashbulb memories do fade over time
like other memories, without control memories to compare to, it could not be certainly said how
similar flashbulb memories were to ordinary everyday memories.
This limitation was first addressed in a study performed by Baylor University
psychologist Charles Weaver in 1991. Weaver had often speculated whether or not it was
possible for flashbulb like memories to be formed from everyday occurrences. Initially,
Weaver’s study was supposed to be a simple lab for his students, but by sheer luck, an event
occurred that allowed Weaver to collect the data presented in this study. For his lab, Weaver
instructed his students to remember as much as they could about some ordinary occurrence in
their life (i.e. a meeting with a friend) and then to fill out the questionnaire he’d distributed
immediately after. The questionnaires he gave the students asked them to specify, in as much as
detail as possible, everything they could remember from that occurrence, including the time,
their location, what they were wearing, and other general details (Weaver, 1991). By pure
chance, the bombings on Iraq began on the same night that Weaver had handed out the first
survey. Weaver, recognizing the opportunity for comparison, drafted a similar second
questionnaire asking what the students could remember when they found out about the bombings
(Weaver, 1991). He then had his students refill out the questionnaires three months later and
again one year later.
The data Weaver collected allowed him to empirically answer two pressing questions
regarding flashbulb memories. Namely, could an everyday event become a memory that
shared the same proposed retentive qualities of flashbulb memories and what qualities actually
separated flashbulb memories from memories of other events? Weaver discovered that from
the first submitted questionnaires to the second, there was a sharp decline in the accuracy and
consistency of the memories for both everyday and flashbulb memories. He found that there
was little difference between the decline of the everyday and flashbulb memories. This decline
then leveled off, with the accuracy and consistency of the three month questionnaires being fairly
similar to that of the one year questionnaires. This suggested that not only did the quality of the
flashbulb memory decline over time, but that they were not any more resistant to fading than
other ordinary memories were.
If the accuracy of the flashbulb memory declined at the same rate as the everyday
memory, how was the memory any different? Weaver found that despite the decreased accuracy
and consistency of the flashbulb memory, the level of confidence the students felt regarding their
answers was substantially higher for the flashbulb memory compared to the ordinary memory.
This suggests that the primary difference between average memories and flashbulb memories
actually lies not in the actual memory, but rather in the confidence placed in their quality. While
this study did have its limiting factors, it greatly improved upon prior research in this field and
provided new questions and numerous new lines of research to be pursued.
Similarly, a study conducted ten years later following the events of 9/11 yielded similar
results. On the day immediately following the September 11th attacks, two Duke University
psychologists distributed questionnaires to over fifty of their undergraduate students. Like
Weaver, these two psychologists were looking for answers as to what set flashbulb memories
apart from regular memories. They chose to focus their study on major questions regarding the
differences between the two types of memories. More specifically, they wanted to know
whether a comparison of flashbulb memories or other ordinary episodic memories would show a
higher degree of consistency and accuracy for flashbulb memories. They also sought to find out
if flashbulb memories resulted in a higher degree of belief (Talarico & Rubin, 2001). In the first
of the two questionnaires for the study, the psychologists asked two sets of questions, one set
pertaining to the participants 9/11 experience, and another set pertaining to some random event
Flashbulb Memories
in the participant’s life in the days just before 9/11. For the second set, the participants were also
asked to provide some sort of cue to be used to recall the memory of that event. In the second
questionnaire the participants filled out an Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire in order to
asses certain properties of their memories. This questionnaire asked them questions to determine
such things as their certainty of their memories, the emotional intensity of their memories, how
they relieved their memories, etc. The researchers then divided the students into three different
groups who later came back to retake the questionnaire either one week, six weeks, or thirty-two
weeks later (Talarico & Rubin, 2001).
The psychologists found that Weaver was correct in theorizing that the actual accuracy
and consistency of flashbulb memories was in truth no different than that of ordinary memories.
For both the control memories and the flashbulb memories, the student’s recollections of the
events had faded to varying degrees. There were similar inconsistencies in reports from both
memory types (Talarico & Rubin, 2001). Through the use of the Autobiographical Memory
Questionnaire, Talarico and Rubin were also able to discern more specific qualities of flashbulb
memories. Talarico and Rubin discovered that students believed their memories of 9/11 to be
much more vivid and more accurate than their everyday memories. The students also felt that
they experienced their 9/11 memories as more coherent stories than they did with their everyday
memories. Despite having personally experienced their everyday memories, the students felt
a higher degree of separation from their everyday memories than they did from their 9/11
memories (Talarico & Rubin, 2001).
More than any study before it, this study proved just how presumptive Brown and
Kulik’s original study had been. Brown and Kulik had taken their data and attempted to explain
Flashbulb Memories
the supposedly increased vividness, accuracy, and retention of flashbulb memories. However,
they hadn’t considered the possibility that the data they received was not necessarily accurate.
This study proved that the assertion that flashbulb memories were more accurate is in fact
incorrect. In reality, flashbulb memories are no different than ordinary memories in the way
they are recorded in the brain. Therefore, it became highly likely that the reasons behind the
increased sharpness of flashbulb memories lay in phenomenology. The memories were not any
clearer because of some scientific or neural occurrence; it was other extrinsic qualities that made
memories of shocking public events so unique. Particularly, it was an unwarranted belief and
confidence in the quality of these memories which set them apart.
After it was established by these studies that the reasons flashbulb memories were
different from ordinary memories were phenomenological rather than scientific, the major
question became how or why these extrinsic qualities were assigned to these types of memories.
In order to address this question, it is necessary to understand how flashbulb memories become
ingrained in the manner that they do. In Charles Weaver’s first study on flashbulb memories, he
noted that across the three measurements periods, there was an eventual leveling off of
inconsistencies. More specifically, though there was a great degree of inaccuracy and
inconsistency between the initial data collection and the second data collection, there was not a
large degree of inconsistency between the second and third data collections. After noticing this
leveling off in the inconsistencies of special memories, Charles Weaver conducted a second
study on flashbulb memories shortly following 9/11. Weaver hypothesized that as the flashbulb
memory faded and as new information about the circumstances of the memory were learned, a
consolidation effect would occur over time. Over four-hundred Baylor University students
Flashbulb Memories
participated in Weaver’s study, with most of the students being re-surveyed at least once
(Weaver & Krug, 2004). Data was collected on five separate occasions, two days after 9/11, one
week after, one month after, three months after, and an entire year after. The questions asked
were used to determine the ability of the participants to recall the event, the consistency of their
recollection, and the accuracy of their recollection. An analysis of this data provided a clear
pattern of recollection. Though the accuracy of the flashbulb memories did decline over time,
the consistency of the memories remained mostly unchanged (Weaver & Krug, 2004).
Essentially, though the participants’ recollection of the 9/11 events was imperfect, after some
time had passed, their memories solidified and did not change. This suggests that many of the
details of a flashbulb memory are lost, but are filled in by learned information to form a new
more permanent memory. In essence, the memories that become known as flashbulb memories
are actually memories that are re-created and replaced in memory.
This conclusion was corroborated by various other studies conducted on consolidation
effects in flashbulb memories. Most notably, a large-scale study conducted by a group of
researchers now known as the 9/11 memory consortium supported the consolidation theory. Just
days after the attack, researchers across the United States teamed up to perform a wide-scale
study of flashbulb memories. Over three thousand U.S. citizens participated in the survey which
was distributed three times, once the week after the attack, then again a year later, and once more
three years later (Hirst et al., 2009). As was found with other smaller, but similar studies,
recollections of 9/11 noticeably declined over the years. Furthermore, the most substantial
decline in memory occurred in the first year between the first and second data collections, with
the decline in memory tapering off between the second and third data collections. This finding is
consistent with that of other studies and suggests that the consolidation effect is a major factor in
the formation of flashbulb memories.
Over the course of the past thirty years, our understanding of flashbulb memories has
completely changed, but there is still a lot to be learned. Flashbulb memories are probably not
recorded in a special way and there is likely not a special mechanism that imprints a flashbulb
memory in the brain. The nature of a flashbulb memory is highly phenomenological and
is comprised of a host of extrinsic qualities assigned by the general populace. While most
Americans might say that they remember exactly where they were when they found out about
9/11, the results of these studies would propose that those memories may not be very accurate.
In fact, those memories are more than likely a consolidation of ordinary episodic memories and
information learned after the fact. This consolidation forms a new memory that people come to
believe is an actual vivid recollection of the day in question. So how and why does this happen?
What makes flashbulb memories so special? According to Ulric Neisser, a prominent figure in
cognitive psychology, flashbulb memories may actually occur as a function of culture and not
individual mnemonic processes. Neisser (1982) suggests that flashbulb memories consolidate
and become ingrained as a result of some sort of collective rehearsal. Essentially, he argues
that through thinking and talking about certain events repeatedly, those events sear themselves
into memory. This may also explain why flashbulb memories are so important and special.
Flashbulb memories occur at the intersection between individuals and history, at the intersection
between our lives and the rest of the world (Neisser, 1982). Simply put, flashbulb memories
may occur as a result of the human need to be a part of it all.
September 11th was a momentous day in American history and it has substantial
meaning to the American citizen. As a result, it is almost expected that anyone old enough
should remember that tragic day. It’s possible that the stigma attached to not being able to
recall such an important day may also encourage people to have a solidified recollection of 9/
11. Given the research that has been conducted and the nature of flashbulb memories, Neisser’s
assertion that flashbulb memories may be culturally driven seems fair. However, there is not
specific empirical evidence to suggest that this is in fact the major driving factor in flashbulb
memories. Future lines of research should be done to understand the role that flashbulb
memories play in American culture. Our understanding of flashbulb memories would certainly
benefit from a better understanding of the root causes of their importance.