No abstract

Similarities and differences between factual memories (FTM) and flashbulb memories (FBM) of the assassination of Israel's Prime Minister, Itzhak Rabin, were explored. About two weeks after the assassination 61 Israeli students filled out a questionnaire which focused on the event and the circumstances in which they had first learned about it. About 11 months later they filled out again the same questionnaire, and self-assessed their emotional and cognitive reactions to the assassination, as well as specific properties of their memory; such as confidence in its accuracy, and the amounts of rehearsals and visual representations. Comparative analysis of the participants' responses on the two questionnaires uncovered decrements of about 25% in FTM accuracy, and about 36% in FBM consistency. Rehearsals and visual representations were more common in FTM than in FBM, but the levels of confidence in memory accuracy were similar for both. FTM which were presumably based on information provided by television broadcasts, appeared to have episodic properties. The data seem to support the hypothesis that FTM and FBM of traumatic public events are encoded together; perhaps by the same memory mechanism.

This qualitative study is part of a mixed methods research project that examined the effectiveness of the primary rehabilitation program for domestic violence offenders in the Israeli Prison Services-the "House of Hope." The quantitative part of the study showed that the "House of Hope" program was effective in reducing recidivism among participating inmates. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the rehabilitation program according to the perspectives of the program staff. For this purpose, semistructured interviews were conducted with the department staff during the study as well as with past directors. The qualitative findings suggested that the success of the program probably stemmed from a synergistic combination of several components, for example, identifying the characteristics of domestic violence offenders and adjusting treatment programs to their needs, along with exposure to psychological treatment in varied therapies (cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoeducational, and psychodynamic) and formats (group therapy and individual therapy) during a 1-year stay in a hierarchical therapeutic community. Other components mentioned are staff professionalism, stability, and the program's location in a therapeutic-oriented prison that is architecturally designed and built to create a less stressful environment for the inmates and the staff.

Collective memory of the assassination of the former Israeli Prime Minister, Itzhak Rabin, was originally examined by asking 61 Israeli students, about two weeks after the assassination (T1) and about 11 months later (T2) to fill out an open-ended questionnaire about the assassination. About 13 years later (T3) a new sample of 80 students also filled out the memory questionnaire. In T2 and T3 the participants also self-assessed various emotional and cognitive variables about their memories. All answers were segmented and categorised into accurate and inaccurate memories. Data analyses showed that the amounts of accurate memories decreased from T1 to T2 by 18 per cent, and from T2 to T3 by an additional 16 per cent, and were positively correlated in T2 with national importance and emotional reaction, and in T3 with self-assessed ability to remember events and amounts of visual representations. Content analysis of the most frequently memorised accurate, inaccurate and omitted memories showed that they displayed differential qualitative characteristics and that the most prevalent accurate narrative has varied over time. It appears that the collective memories of Rabin's assassination showed episodic features similar to those shown by eyewitnesses exposed to emotion-arousing events only once. The data suggest a distinction between episodic "collective memories" and semantic "collective knowledge".