Flashbulb memories are often associated with important historical or autobiographical events. Typical ‘flashbulb’ events are dramatic, unexpected, shocking.. An example of a flashbulb memory is the assassination of the US president John F. Kennedy in 1963 and recalling the moment you learned of the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
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A flashbulb memory is an accurate and exceptionally vivid long-lasting memory for the circumstances surrounding learning about a dramatic event. Flashbulb Memories are memories that are affected by our emotional state.
The vividness and accuracy of flashbulb memories can vary across age and culture. The amygdala seems to play a key role in the formation and retrieval of flashbulb memories.
Additionally, while ordinary autobiographical memories involve a dimensional structure containing every level of autobiographical information, flashbulb memories stem apparently from a more densely integrated area of autobiographical information (Lanciano & Curci, 2012).
Herein, the formation of the flashbulb memory is significantly influenced by the individual’s emotional relationship to the particular event (Curci & Luminet, 2009). A common approach seems to characterize studies of flashbulb memory.
Flashbulb memory has long been classified as a subset of autobiographical memory. Autobiographical memory involves' one's everyday life experiences (Davidson & Glisky, 2002).
Which of the following best describes a flashbulb memory? A memory formed during a emotional event that seems to be very vivid, but is no more accurate than a normal memory.
Flashbulb memory is a special kind of emotional memory, which refers to vivid and detailed memories of highly emotional events that appear to be recorded in the brain as a picture taken by camera. You just studied 6 terms!
The recollection of geographical location, activities, and feelings during a monumental or emotional life experience all fall under the category of flashbulb memories. Some common examples of such remembrances include the memory of 9/11 attacks, a school shooting, college graduation, or even the birth of one's child.
The term "flashbulb memory" suggests the surprise, indiscriminate illumination, detail, and brevity of a photograph; however flashbulb memories are only somewhat indiscriminate and are far from complete.
The amygdala is a region of the brain primarily associated with emotional processes. The Midtown participants did not show this activation. That might suggest that flashbulb memories are more vivid, because of the additional emotional processing from the amygdala.
They postulated flashbulb memory occurring via the special mechanism hypothesis, which argues for the existence of a special biological memory mechanism that, when triggered by an event exceeding critical levels of surprise, creates a permanent record of the details and circumstances surrounding the experience.
Flashbulb memory is best represented by which of the following statements? It is memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an emotional event that remains especially vivid but not necessarily accurate over time.
Flashbulb Memories are memories that are affected by our emotional state. The analogy of a flashbulb describes the way we can often remember where you where, what you were doing, how you were informed, and how you reacted, as if the whole scene had been 'illuminated' by a flashbulb.
Moreover, the fundamental characteristics of a flashbulb memory are informant (who broke the news), own affect (how they felt), aftermath (importance of the event), other affect (how others felt), ongoing activity (what they were doing) and place (where they where when the event happened).
Surprise refers to not anticipating the event and consequentiality refers to the level of importance of the event. Notably, however, they held that while flashbulb memories are fixed, they are not always necessarily accessible from long-term memory (Cohen, McCloskey & Wible, 1990).
In general, the factors which impact flashbulb memories are considered to be independent of cultural variation. Proximity to an event and personal involvement are generally regarded as the chief determining factors in memory formation.
However, there are other research findings which suggest that flashbulb memories are more accurate than everyday memories because consequentiality, personal involvement, distinction and proximity can enhance recall (Sharot, Delgado & Phelps, 2004).
Roger Brown and James Kulik introduced the term ‘flashbulb memory’ in 1977 in their study of individuals’ ability to recall consequential and surprising events. Debate centers on whether they are a special case (resistant to forgetting over time ), or the same as other memories.
The amygdala, thus, seems to play a role in encoding and retrieving the memories of significant public events. The amygdala’s function in memory is related to the increase of arousal caused by an experience (McGaugh, 2004). This suggests that what influences arousal possibly impacts the nature of memories.