Flashbulb Memories by Brown & K ulik

1. Flashbulb Memoriesby Brown & Kulik Heaven, Jenna and Jong Kwan

2. What is flashbulb memory? • It was suggested by Brown and Kulik in 1977 • A kind of emotional memory • Vivid and detailed memories of highly emotional events • Recorded in the brain like a camera’s flash • Formed instantaneously and remembered forever, after experiencing shocking events

3. Brown and Kulik’s Experiment • Clear memories of actions, emotions, and place • Many recalled flashbulb memories of personal events • Emotional events are better remembered than less emotional events, due to special neural mechanism • Events are better remembered when there is a high level of emotional arousal at the time of the notification of an event, and the surprise following it.

4. Neisser’ssuggestion • People do not always know that an event is important until later • Flashbulb memories are governed by a storytelling schema following a specific structure • Neisser and Harsch’s investigation in 1992 about people’s memory accuracy • Neisser argued that these memories are often inaccurate and fabricated