Vivid memories of emotional events: The accuracy of remembered minutiae

Recall, recognition, and confidence patterns in eyewitness testimony

“…First, in spite of great e orts made for subjects to be incidental observers of the emotional material (e.g. Burke et al, 1992;Christianson, 1984;Heuer and Reisberg, 1990), there was nothing which contrasted in a direct and simple fashion the di erences between incidental and intentional processing. Second, by using a ®lm instead of static materials, such as slides, the di erence between the type of information (central and peripheral) and evaluated contents (actions and details) was systematically distinguished, thereby analysing the e ect of both variables in two successive recall tests, recognition and response con®dence.…”

“…Therefore, the di erence between central and peripheral information set forth in the attentional narrowing hypothesis (Easterbrook, 1959) may largely explain the divergences detected. Taking this variable into account, ®eld studies (Christianson and HuÈ binette, 1993), traumatic autobiographical experiences (Christianson and Loftus, 1990;Wessel and Merckelbach, 1994), laboratory work simulating events by means of slides (Burke et al, 1992;Christianson, 1984;Christianson et al, 1996;Loftus, 1987, 1991;Heuer and Reisberg, 1990), ®lms (Kebeck and Lohaus, 1986) or aversive situations (Wessell and Merckelbach, 1997) demonstrate that central contents of emotional events are recalled with precision to the detriment of other more peripheral contents.…”

“…Burke et al, 1992;Christianson, 1984;Heuer and Reisberg, 1990). In this study one intentional and one incidental learning condition were prepared for the purposes of checking to see if the type of learning a ects general performance or the memory pattern for the di erent contents of the event.…”

Illusory Memories of Emotionally Charged Words in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Further Evidence for Atypical Emotion Processing Outside the Social Domain

“…In order to advance our understanding of the role of affective disturbances in ASD, it is therefore important to broaden the focus of research and assess how the emotional significance of stimuli impacts on processes that are not primarily of a social nature. Studies of memory are ideally suited for this purpose because the influence of emotional factors in this domain are well established and understood (see Reisberg &Hertel, 2004 andUttl, Ohta &Siegenthaler, 2006 for a collection of extensive reviews).…”

“…One of the most reliable findings in the typical memory literature is that emotionally significant information is better remembered than neutral information (Bradley, Greenwald, Petry & Lang, 1992;Cahill & McGaugh, 1998;Heuer & Reisberg, 1990;Kensinger & Corkin;2003). To date only four studies have investigated this phenomenon in individuals with ASD.…”