Describe and evaluate relevant theories of flashbulb memory.
An understanding of human memory is substantial in the study of cognition. As one of the most essential and influential cognitive process, memory affects various aspects of our daily life. Examples of its importance include functioning in everyday life, recognizing faces of people around us, remembering some of our basic skills that we gained through knowledge and experience. Mainly, without memory we would have the same lack of knowledge as newborn infants. (Eysenck, 1997)
The purpose of this essay is to focus on insights in flashbulb memory as one of the forms of human memory. The essay will explore the formation and maintenance of flashbulb memories, including the studies that
…show more content…
For example, in the study conducted by (Brown and Kulik 1997) about Resignation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher it was found that the group of subjects who were more introduced and interested in her political situation experienced more vivid and accurate flashbulb memory than those who had little or no interest of her administration. The main variable of this study was the nationality of the subject samples. They were divided in two groups. The UK group of subjects, and non UK group consisted of subjects who were not British. All the subjects completed FB memory questionnaire within 14 days of resignation and again after an interval of 11 months. The incidence and accuracy of Feb memories of UK group was approximately three times greater 85.6 % than in non UK group, 28.6 % from which it can be concluded that other three factors: Surprise, Novelty of this event and Individual’s affective attitude to the person(s) central to the event had more influence on formation of fb memories within the subjects who were closely associated and affected by resignation. (Conway and Anderson