Current Directions in Psychological Science
Current Directions in Psychological Science
5 years ago

Flashbulb Memories.

Phelps EA, Hirst W
We review and analyze the key theories, debates, findings, and omissions of the existing literature on flashbulb memories (FBMs), including what factors affect their formation, retention, and degree of confidence. We argue that FBMs do not require special memory mechanisms and are best characterized as involving both forgetting and mnemonic distortions, despite a high level of confidence. Factual memories for FBM-inducing events generally follow a similar pattern. Although no necessary and sufficient factors straightforwardly account for FBM retention, media attention particularly shapes memory for the events themselves. FBMs are best characterized in term of repetitions, even of mnemonic distortions, whereas event memories evidence corrections. The bearing of this literature on social identity and traumatic memories is also discussed.

Publisher URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26997762

DOI: PubMed:26997762

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.