Autobiographical Misremembering: John Dean is not Alone

Belli, Robert F.; Schuman, Howard; Jackson, Benita

doi:10.1002/(sici)1099-0720(199706)11:3<187::aid-acp446>3.3.co;2-b

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Bahrick and his colleagues (Bahrick, 1983, 1984; Bahrick, Bahrick, & Wittlinger, 1975) have shown that neutral facts, such as the names of fellow college students, college streets, or college-learned Spanish vocabulary, are steadily forgotten for six years, and then, if still retained, preserved for decades to come. Along the same lines, Belli, Schuman, and Jackson (1997) found good retention after decades for newsworthy events such as the Tet Offensive, at least for participants for whom the event “defined” their generation. Neither of these studies examined whether respondents remembered the circumstances in which they learned of the event, making their relevance to the topic of flashbulb memories at best speculative.…”

mentioning

confidence: 77%

Long-term memory for the terrorist attack of September 11: Flashbulb memories, event memories, and the factors that influence their retention.

Hirst

Phelps

Buckner

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

182

249

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More than 3,000 individuals from seven US cities reported on their memories of learning of the terrorist attacks of September 11, as well as details about the attack, one week, 11 months, and/or 35 months after the assault. Some studies of flashbulb memories examining long-term retention show slowing in the rate of forgetting after a year, whereas others demonstrate accelerated forgetting. The present paper indicates that (1) the rate of forgetting for flashbulb memories and event memory (memory for details about the event itself) slows after a year, (2) the strong emotional reactions elicited by flashbulb events are remembered poorly, worse than non-emotional features such as where and from whom one learned of the attack, and (3) the content of flashbulb and event memories stabilizes after a year. The results are discussed in terms of community memory practices.Keywords flashbulb memories; long-term retention; memory practices; event memory; emotional memory Brown and Kulik (1977) suggested the term flashbulb memory for the "circumstances in which one first learned of a very surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) event," for example, hearing the news that President John Kennedy had been shot. Since Brown and Kulik's description of their findings, the range of topics addressed in studies of flashbulb memories has grown substantially, from initial questions about special mechanisms (McCloskey, Wible, & Cohen, 1988; Neisser & Harsh, 1992) to more recent questions about the impact of aging and dementia (Budson, Simons, Sullivan, Beier, Solomon, Scinto, et al., 2004;Budson, Simons, Waring, Sullivan, Hussoin, & Schacter, 2007; Davidson, Cook, & Glisky, 2005), the history of post-traumatic stress disorder (Qin, Mitchell, Johnson, Krystal, Southwick et all, 2003), as well as the role of social identity [e.g., as seen in the presence or absence, respectively, of flashbulb memories of French citizens and French-speaking Belgians of the death of French President Mitterraand (Curci, Luminet, Finkenauer, & Gisle, 2001; see also Berntsen, 2008;Hirst & Meksin, 2008)]. Researchers have also begun to investigate memories for the flashbulb event itself (Curci & Luminet, 2006; Luminet, Curci, Marsh, Wessel, Constantin, Genocoz, et al., 2004; Pezdak, 2003;Shapiro, 2006; Tekcan, Berium, Gülgöz, & Er, 2003). In this literature, the term flashbulb memory refers to memory for circumstances in which one learned of the event and would include memories of where, when, and from whom one learned of, for instance, the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. The term event memory refers to memory for facts about the flashbulb event and would include, for instance, that four planes were involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack and that both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were targets. 1 1 There is much terminological confusion in the literature. First, the term flashbulb memory could be construed as implying an accurate representation of the circumstances in which one learned of the emotionally charged public...

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mentioning

confidence: 77%

Long-term memory for the terrorist attack of September 11: Flashbulb memories, event memories, and the factors that influence their retention.

Hirst

Phelps

Buckner

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

182

249

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The strongest existing questionnaire evidence comes from studies by Schuman, Belli, and Bischoping (1997) and Belli, Schuman, and Jackson (1997). Inserted into a longer survey interview were questions asking that a subset of the following events or people be identified: the WPA, the Holocaust, the Marshall Plan, Joe McCarthy, Rosa Parks, the Tet Offensive, the Village ofMylai, Woodstock, John Dean, Watergate, and Christa McAuliffe.…”

Section: Existing Questionnaire Studies Of Public Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best

1998

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Evidence is reviewed that for older adults the period from 10 to 30 years of age produces recall of the most autobiographical memories, the most vivid memories, and the most important memories. It is the period from which peoples' favorite films, music, and books come and the period from which they judge the most important world events to have originated. Factual, semantic, general-knowledge, multiple-choice questions about the Academy Awards, the World Series, and current events from this period were answered more accurately by two different groups of 30 older adults tested 10 years apart. A cognitive theory based on the importance of transitions and several noncognitive theories are considered as explanations of this pervasive phenomenon.Adolescence and early adulthood are special times for memory encoding. There is solid evidence that people recall a disproportionate number of autobiographical memories from that period when they are asked to recall important events, or recall vivid memories, or recall the first event that comes to mind when they are cued by a word. There is also some evidence, which we will add to here, that people answer general-knowledge, semantic-memory questions more accurately if the questions are about information that they have learned during those years. Adolescence and early adulthood are special in other ways. In our culture, it is when people come ofage, when their place in society is formed. It is a time ofidentityformation (Erikson, 1950). It is the time oftheir generation (Schuman & Scott, 1989), their era (Sehulster, 1996). Things were better then, or at least more vivid and exciting. It is the time for which we have the most nostalgia (Holbrook, 1993 3In this paper, we will first review the autobiographicalmemory and preference literature in order to document that events or activities that occur between the ages of 10 and 30 are recalled more often and judged to be more important or better than events or activities from other age periods. This increase in performance with respect to, or preference for, the time between the ages of 10 and 30 constitutes what may be called a bump, and we will also describe the range ofphenomena for which this bump exists. Next, we will describe a study in which we used objective five-choice questions about three domains of public information in order to extend this finding to the recall ofsemantic, general-knowledge factual information. We will suggest four accounts, based on different approaches in psychology, of why this bump in memory and preference might occur. Thus, we will first document and extend the existence of the phenomenon and only then try to understand it (Rubin, 1989;Rubin & Wenzel, 1996). We have chosen to do this in part because although theories have been put forth to explain the bump in autobiographical memory and other domains, the bump occurs in a range of situations, and it seems parsimonious to consider theories that could account for all the data. For instance, showing that the bump occurs for factual, semantic memory c...

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“…In conventional questionnaires the interviewing sequence may affect the likelihood of reporting non-normative events with respondents' recollections of more recent events impairing their ability to remember earlier occurrences (Belli et al 1997). By contrast in LHCs the iterative structure of the interview and the use of temporal landmarks help the respondents access and report memories on unexpected events (Yoshihama et al 2005).…”

Section: Family Timesmentioning

confidence: 99%