Schacter, D.L. (1996). Emotional memories: When the past persists. Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past. Chapter 7.
Cahill, L., Babinsky,R., Markowitsch, H., & McGaugh, J. L. (1995). The amygdala and emotional memory. Nature, 377, 295 – 296.
Levine, L., & Pizarro, D. (2004). Emotion and Memory Research: A Grumpy Overview. Social Cognition, 22, 530-554.
Brown, R., & Kulik, J. (1977). Flashbulb memories. Cognition, 5, 73-79. In: U. Neisser & I. E. Hyman (eds.) Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts. (pp. 50-65). New York: Worth Publishers.
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Four main claims stated in the article Emotion and Memory Research: A Grumpy Overview (2004) captures the general argument of the relationship between emotion and memory. The first claim is that emotional memories are indelible, unchanging and unforgettable, the second that emotion really has no bearing on the memory, the third that emotion enhances memory in a similar tone and the fourth that emotion enhances memory for pivotal information (the key argument for flashbulb memories). The readings show quite clearly how memories do not tend to stay constant and unchanging and that in fact, even life events such as a war, a fire, or a holocaust do not ensure fidelity to a memory. I’m deeply affected by the idea that flashbulb memories, sure-fire bets, one might argue, for specifying not only location and activity but relative detail, may be distorted by expectation.
The psychologist Steen Larsen who was studying memories of his own, immediately wrote down his experience after hearing of the Olof Palme assassination. He subsequently found himself months later adding details and forgetting others. He, for instance, added his wife into the picture and found himself believing that she was in fact in the kitchen with him when he heard the news. She was not. Studies were conducted regarding individual’s current attitude and how it is able to affect their response to current situations and past memories. Holmberg & Holmes (1994) found that husbands who viewed their marriages as less happy over time recalled interaction early in the marriage as more negative than they had originally reported.
In Schacter’s Searching for Memory (1996), he explains a phenomenon called mood congruent retrieval. He shows how even non-depressed people who claim to feel sad are all too easily able to think of a flood of negative thoughts and remember painful experiences no matter how relevant they are to the offset of the original saddened mood. It is subsequently easier for happy people to be flooded by happy memories and remember positive experiences. He shows how this could be a serious problem in those suffering from clinical depression as it initiates a sort of negative feedback cycle of maintained depressive or negative thoughts and images. It is a perpetuation of mood based on current affect. This is an interesting tool to recall for psychologists with patients. Being able to judge current mood and then the subsequent memory or story being revealed during a session would perhaps clarify why a patient is recalling certain negative memories at this point in time which may or may not be entirely accurate due to mood.
Although the “Now Print” mechanism isn’t completely accurate, I understand where Brown and Kulik were coming from in making this hypothesis. The “Now Print” mechanism is kind of like what the amygdala does. Although a particular moment in time isn’t necessarily “frozen”, it seems as if it is due to the release of stress-related hormones in the brain, which cause emotional moments to be remembered more easily and vividly than others. I find it really interesting that high confidence comes with flashbulb memories especially in inaccurate flashbulb memories. If these types of memories are so permanent, you would think it would be a little easier to not let other memories get mixed up with them. Schacter says one reason for the strength of flashbulb memories is that they are likely to be discussed and thought about frequently in the days, weeks, and even years following the event (201). Although frequent discussion of the event may help the memory become stronger, it is also the reason for the inaccurate details that develop within these types of memories. Schacter uses veterans as examples in order to differentiate between flashbacks and memories. Since veterans have been around countless shocking events I was wondering if this causes their flashbulb type memories to be more distorted, seeing as they have a lot of memories that are of the same kind to cause “time slice errors”. This is probably why they tend to have frequent flashbacks as opposed to flashbulb memories. They have experienced so many emotional memories over and over, that instead of recalling them one by one, all of the memories make them fearful, thus resulting in a worst-fear vision after awhile instead of the recall of individual memories.
Throughout the four readings this week, I found chapter seven of Daniel Schacter’s Searching for Memory, Emotional Memories: When the Past Persists, most interesting and most relevant to the feelings about my own traumatic experiences. First speaking about “flashbulb memories,” in which one remembers extreme and shocking traumatic events which are personally significant and consequential with very high accuracy. Nevertheless, as more and more time passes, although somewhat accurate for the central features of event, even flashbulb memories deteriorate in accuracy. Schacter poses that source confusion may be at cause for the decay of our flashbulb memories in that, for example, one may have first heard about the September 11th attacks through a teacher at school and upon returning home turned on the television to see the attacks broadcasted on nearly every news station, as I did. As time passes, one may confuse where they first heard about the attacks, or any event so emotionally arousing as to be categorized as a “flashbulb” memory. Despite source confusion, flashbulb memories are still remembered with much greater strength than ordinary events. I very clearly remember when our principal walked into my middle-school cafeteria on September 11th, as well as that it was just after ten in the morning, that I was sitting with three of my best friends at the time, Samantha, Michael, and Jaime, and that immediately following the announcement not only was I in a state of disbelief, shock and panic, but the nearly 150 other children in my lunch period broke into hysteria, breaking out forbidden cell phones despite the consequences, and one after another being picked up by their parents. It makes sense to me that I remember that morning, and even that afternoon when I returned home to see it for the first time on television as they replayed the World Trade Center attacks over and over again, with such clarity; as Schacter reckons, we remember profoundly emotionally intense situations with near accurate vividness because of the frequency of which we discuss the event following its occurrence. September 11th, 2001 may have happened almost nine years ago, as the Holocaust ended 64 years ago, but never do these events stop being discussed, both in order to relieve their victims of their emotional trauma and to prevent a similar disaster from ever materializing again. Flashbulb memories are not necessarily of national importance, but also of intensely emotionally arousing situations, either positive or negative, that are of personal significance. Traumatic memories, however, is what intrigues me the most. Quite commonly, events that are emotionally traumatic are remembered with more precision than ordinary events, but just as flashbulb memories they are prone to distortion over extended periods of time. Schacter points to the work of Lenore Terr, a psychiatrist known for her work with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in children, who attributes the degradation of memory to the “perceptual errors that occur at the time of the event” (Schacter 1996: 205) which is caused by the intense and extremely shocking nature of the experience. Most often our memories of traumatic experiences that bring us emotional pain are tenacious and exceptionally accurate, but when atrophy does occur, it is usually in regards to the secondary details of the episode. A robbery at gunpoint is a likely example of how we remember central details as opposed to inessential aspects of emotionally disturbing events in that one is likely to remember exactly what a gun looked like as it was pointed in one’s face due to the high levels of anxiety associated with being shot, but other details will be harder and harder to recall over time. Schacter closes with discussion of the amygdala, an almond sized structure in the brain that controls emotions. In the case that we endure an emotionally arousing experience, either pleasurable or saddening, the amygdala releases “stress-related hormones” (Schacter 1996: 215) which could likely explain why extremely emotional or distressing events are remembered with such strength for many, many years to follow.
Possibly the most interesting aspect of these readings was flashbulb memory. This is perhaps because I can actually “test” myself for my own flashbulb memories. In the recent past there have been two major events that I have flashbulb memory for, one is September 11 and the other the November 2008 Bombay terrorist attacks. I remember exactly where I was when I was informed about September 11, yet the memory has faded. Like Neiser and Harsch suggest, flashbulb memories become increasingly inaccurate as time passes. However, Sven-Ake Christianson found that even though the accuracy of the memory may decline, the accuracy one has for important events is still much more intact than those memories one has for unimportant events. The memory I have for where I was when I learned of the Bombay terror attacks is much more clear, one because it happened more recently and two, because it is my home. Schacter talks about the consequentiality of an event, how the event is related to our lives and how the more important it is to us, the more accurate the memory will be.
This discussion about flashbulb memory and how even a memory of an extremely important event could eventually change, reminded me of the readings we had on false memory. When Neiser and Harsch did an experiment testing the accuracy of flashbulb memory for the Challenger explosion and they found one participant who reported that she had learned of the explosion in a religion class. Later, when asked again she reported that she learned of the event while watching TV with her roommate. This probably happened because there is often a “filter” through which we remember these events based on our emotional states after the event takes place. This reminded me a little of the misinformation effect and how information provided after you have formed a memory of an event can change that first memory. The more you think about this flashbulb memory, the more you add to it based on what you have learned after the event took place, the more details you add, the more distorted your memory becomes. This also ties into the discussion we had about the Ingram family and that controversy. It is fascinating how unreliable our memories actually are.
In Levine, L., & Pizarro, D.’s “Emotion and Memory Research: A Grumpy Overview.” Some studies were conducted with regards to individual’s current attitude and how it is able to affect their response to current situations and past memories. Holmberg & Holmes (1994) found that husbands who viewed their marriages as less happy over time later recalled interaction early in the marriage as more negative than they had originally reported. This reframing done by the husband could be explained by their need to justify the divorce. If they convince themselves that the marriage was worse than it was in reality it can help heal the pain that they feel after the divorce. We have explored this theme in other readings in this class. Our need to see our decisions as positive in hindsight helps us reestablish positive senses of self in the present. If we feel that we are better in the present now than we were then our past memories tend to look more negative. What we report about our lives and how we actually feel are two very separate things. Our feelings constantly change about the past.
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