Flashbulb Memories long-lasting vivid memories of highly- important & dramatic events - R Brown & J Kulik 1977 Kennedy assassinations Elvis Presley death John Lennon shooting Challenger explosion Mrs Thatcher's resignation Princess Diana death George Harrison death Twin Towers attack 127 of 179 could remember what doing when Abraham Lincoln assassinated - Coleford 1899 Oklahoma bombing eyewitness - "engraved on his memory" - L Cahill & J L McGaugh 1998 happy events also - eg: first romance, high school graduation, weddings, births of children, etc 'flashbulbs' no different to ordinary memories - Rubin & Kozin 1984 by-passing of STM rehearsal mechanisms? support for distinctiveness & meaning qualitatively different - special neural mechanism? - R Brown & J Kulik repeated frequently in discussion with others? - Neisser 1981 hormones create arousal and remembering of experience as adaptive behaviour - L Cahill & J L McGaugh 1998 Challenger interviewees' reinterviewed 9 months later and recall not so accurate - M McCloskey, C G Wible & N J Cohen 1988 92% still accurate similar studies similar results - 3 year Retention Interval - Neisser & Harsch 1992 - 78% few days after to 58% 7-8 months - Bohannon 1988 Conway's Mrs Thatcher research - M Conway, S J Anderson, S F Larsen, C M Donnelly, M A McDaniel, A G R McClelland & R E Rawles 1994 more black Americans had flashbulbs of Martin Luther King's assassination than whites - J Kulik & R Brown 1982 for ethical reasons, research tends to be on public rather than personal events Repression Freudian Ego-Defence Mechanism forget anxiety-inducing events 'Motivated Forgetting' - Bernard Weiner & Henry Reed 1969 easier to recall neutral than emotionally-charged words - G Levinger & J Clark 1961 longer exposure time needed to recognise threatening words like 'raped' and 'penis' - Elliot McGinnies 1949 hostile fathers -> more repressed childhood memories - Lynn Myers & Chris Brewin 1994 129 young women hospital treatment for sexual abuse - 17 years later 38 percent no recollection of abuse - 16 percent unable to recall at one time - Linda Meyer Williams 1994 28% of group of female incest victims had severe memory deficits from childhood - most frequently those who had suffered violent abuse - Judith Herman & Emily Schatzow 1987 20 years later Eileen remembered her father sexually abusing and then killing her friend Susan - Philip Zimbardo, Mark McDermott, Jeroen Janz & Nico Metaal 1995 'Irene' unable to recall watching her mother die - I M I Hunter 1957 depressive symptoms relieved by remembering - Anthony Bateman & Jeremy Holmes 1995 Joseph Boden & Roy Baumeister 1997 used repressive coping questionnaire devised by D A Weinberger, G E Schwartz & R J Davidson1990 repressors less able to recall details of emotional events than non-repressors pleasant events recalled better than unpleasant ones- W R Walker, R J Vogel & C P Thompson 1997 substantial number of criminals don't remember their crime - Alan Parkin 1993 how to prove? brain scans identify repressing activity - Richard Kanaan, Tom Craig, Simon Wesseley & Anthony David 2007 ethical issues in testing for World War II veterans couldn't remember battlefield trauma - Bertam Karon & Anmarie Widener 1977 role in compensating for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? - Hannah Kaminer & Peretz Lavie 1991 D S Holmes 1990 reviewed 60 years of experimental tests on repression no evidence to unequivocally support existence of repression lab experiments don't induce levels of anxiety Freud meant False Memory Syndrome 'recovered memories' of abuse suggested by therapist eg: Beth Rutherford therapist enquired about abuse Beth then read about abuse Beth's dreams analysed as being about real abuse medical examination: Beth a virgin child's memory of gun attack proved false - Robert Pynoos & Kathleen Nader 1989 children led to create false memories - Michelle Leichtman & Stephen Ceci 1995 detailed accounts likely to be accurate - Chris Brewin, Bernice Andrews & Ian Gotlib 1993 important to be cautious - Alan Baddeley 1999 courts deciding against therapists? - K Patel 1994