Phantom flashbulbs: False recollections of hearing the news about Challenger

“This view is challenged by recent research (Christianson, 1989, Neisser and Harsch, 1992).”

“…and intrusive recollections in post-traumatic stress disorder are often vivid, but at the same time lacking quality of contextual detail (Bluck & Li, 2001; Brewin, 2007; Brewin, Huntley, & Whalley, 2012; Ehlers, Hackmann, & Michael, 2004; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Talarico & Rubin, 2003).”

“Research suggests that our ability to accurately recall memories and past affective states—even those involving highly emotional events (e.g., 9/11, Kennedy assas-sination)—is quite poor (Hirst et al., 2009; Neisser & Harsch, 1992).”

“Furthermore, critiques have assumed that most participants have a conservative criterion for reporting recognition of conditioned stimuli; whereas, participants in emotional experiments often use a very liberal criterion for recognition (e.g., Neisser and Harsch 1992; Sharot et al. 2004; Talarico and Rubin 2003).”

“On the basis of the coding scheme outlined by Neisser and Harsch (1992), consistency of free response answers was coded on a scale of zero to three with three corresponding to completely consistent (i.e., the same information with the same specificity was provided at both times), two to mostly…”

“One approach has been to examine the recall of a shocking newsworthy event such as the death of John F. Kennedy (R. Brown & Kulik, 1977), the explosion of the Challenger shuttle ( Neisser & Harsch, 1992 ), and the September 11, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attack (see Pezdek, 2003b) in flashbulb memory (FBM) studies.”

“In any event, it is now well-established from both case studies (e.g. Neisser 1981; Neisser & Harsch 1992) and laboratory work (e.g. Burt et al. 1995; Loftus et al. 1978) that people’s autobiographical memories are not always accurate.”

“The results not only did not support the “f lashbulb” memory hypothesis, but found a statistical tendency in the opposite direction: the vividness of the recall tended toward a negative relationship with accuracy (Neisser and Harsch 1992).”

“Specifically, there is one class of event memories that seems to impose great constraints on memory judgments—that is, memories for publicly shocking events, such as murders of political leaders, natural disasters, or major terrorist attacks (see Brown & Kulik, 1977; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Schmidt, 2004; Talarico & R…”

“Although people believe that their flashbulb memories are correct, research has shown that these memories are often no more accurate than those for normal, everyday events (Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Schmolck, Buffalo, & Squire, 2000; Talarico & Rubin, 2003).”

“Consistency scores were calculated using an adapted version of the weighted attribute score (WAS) used by Neisser and Harsch (1992) and Kvavilashvili et al. (2009).”

“…Pillemer, 1984), and second, the indirect pathway, which involves social and reconstructive factors at a post-encoding level (reconstructive hypothesis, Christianson, 1989; Larsen, 1992; McCloskey et al., 1988; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Pezdek, 2003; Talarico & Rubin, 2003; Wright & Gaskell, 1995).”

“In terms of remembering the “truth” of our experience where truth might mean accurate representation, research has shown that emotions’ influence on episodic memory does not improve memory accuracy. After the explosion of the 1986 American space shuttle, Challenger, subjects were asked to record their memory of the ev…”

“The more consistent the second memory description is with this first memory description, the more the second memory description can be thought to be an accurate reflection of the original event (Neisser & Harsch, 1992).”

“…authors claim that memories of trauma are less accurate and detailed than autobiographical memories of other kinds of event, because they are often recovered in a fragmented fashion (Byrne et al., 2001; Kihlstrom, 1996; Neisser and Harsch, 1992; Southwick et al., 1997; Yuille and Cutshall, 1986).”

“The first case of coherence verbatim occurs when participants reported exactly the same memory at both test and retest (Christianson, 1989; Neisser & Harsch, 1992).”

“Since that early account, errors have been found to be common when people recount the circumstances in which they learned about highly-emotional public events (Hirst et al., 2015; Neisser & Harsh, 1992).”

“In the first case a verbatim coherence is required, according to which participants need to provide exactly the same information at test and retest recall sessions (Christianson, 1989; Neisser & Harsch, 1992).”

“two surveys. The amount of detail was rated on a scale from 0 (no information provided), 1 (information without specific detail), and 2 (specific detail), a scheme similar to that used by Neisser and Harsch (1992) .”

“According to the “narrative and rehearsal” hypothesis of Neisser and Harsh ( 1992 ), FBMs are not supported by a special mechanism (Now Print) which occurs at the precise moment of the hearing of the striking news, but they are the byproduct of much personal rethinking and retelling, and media recounting, which increa…”

“Although individuals often believe that their flashbulb memories are accurate, research has shown that these memories are often no more accurate than are those for everyday events (Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Schmolck, Buffalo, & Squire, 2000; Talarico & Rubin, 2003).”

“…& Brainerd, 2017; Brainerd, Stein, Silveira, Rohenkohl, & Reyna, 2008; Kaplan, Van Damme, Levine, & Loftus, 2016; Kensinger, 2009; Kensinger, GaroffEaton, & Schacter, 2007; Mather, 2007; Mather & Sutherland, 2011; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Sharot, Delgado, & Phelps, 2004; Talarico & Rubin, 2003).”

“Our memories are quite imperfect and we can easily come to believe that something happened which, in fact, did not (Neisser and Harsch, 1992; Schacter, 1999).”

“On average, fewer than half the original details were reported accurately at this follow-up interview (Neisser 1992).”

“Researchers have long been questioning the special status of FBMs due to the lack of consistency observed in CCs’ recalls (Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Talarico & Rubin, 2003).”

“Our memory for what we did is fallible (Neisser & Harsch, 1992), and our memory for why we did it even more so: there is considerable evidence that we are quite bad at recalling both our former intentional attitudes and the cognitive processes that led us to hold our current attitudes (Arnold &…”

“Their findings echo those of Neisser and Harsch (1992) who studied memory reports of college students for their recollection of learning of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.”

“5-3 years after the Challenger explosion, participants were shown the narratives they wrote a day after the event [9].”

“Second, when people recall veridical autobiographical events, be they recent or distant, mundane or shocking, their reports frequently contain inconsistencies or errors (e.g., Goldfarb et al. 2019; Neisser and Harsch 1992; Pezdek 2001; Talarico and Rubin 2003).”

“Although the ratings may reflect people’s subjective beliefs and perceptions, they rarely are found to be related to memory accuracy or consistency (e.g., Kristo et al., 2009; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Talarico & Rubin, 2003).”

“…many years researchers have debated whether FBMs are no different from ordinary autobiographical formations (Larsen, 1992; McCloskey et al., 1988; Neisser & Harsch, 1992), or whether they should be considered as Address correspondence to: Dr Tiziana Lanciano, Department of Psychology and…”

“The judges coded both the free and probed recall responses using a method similar to Neisser and Harsch (1992).”

“…memory mechanism (e.g., Christianson, 1989; Conway et al., 1994), whether they are more accurate than typical autobiographical memories (e.g., Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Schmolck, Buffalo, & Squire, 2000), and whether they are more resistant to forgetting than typical autobiographical memories…”

“…the resignation of Margaret Thatcher; and of course, the assassination of political figures, such as (in addition to John F. Kennedy) Malcolm X and Olaf Palme (Bohannon, 1988;Bohannon& Symons, 1992; Brown & Kulik, 1977; Christianson, 1989; McCloskey, Wible, & Cohen, 1988; Neisser & Harsch, 1992).”

“…to post-encoding social factors, such as rehearsal mechanisms (rumination, social sharing, news searching), previous knowledge of the event, and attitude (Christianson, 1989; Larsen, 1992; McCloskey et al., 1988; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Pezdek, 2003; Talarico & Rubin, 2003; Wright & Gaskell, 1995).”

“From disasters (Neisser & Harsch, 1992) and high profile deaths (Brown & Kulik, 1977) to the end of a war (Berntsen & Thomsen, 2005) and World Cup victory (Tinti, Schmidt, Testa, & Levine, 2014), memory researchers have vigorously studied how people remember details for emotionally charged public…”

“Whereas evidence concerning their stability has built up over time, sceptics emphasise that FBMs are as prone to errors and reconstructive processes as any other mental representation (Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Schmolck, Buffalo, & Squire, 2000; Talarico & Rubin, 2003).”

“Regardless, the present fi ndings provide some support for the argument that metamemory beliefs play an important role in shaping how FBMs are remembered, if not only for more Western/individualized cultures (Bell & Loftus, 1989; Johnson & Raye, 1981; Neisser & Harsch, 1992).”

“…Brown, & Mulligan, 2003; Tekcan, Ece, Gülgöz, & Er, 2003), whereas others have found the reverse (e.g., Curci, Luminet, Finkenauer, & Gisle, 2001; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Talarico & Rubin, 2003, 2007; Weaver, 1993; for a related review see van Giezen, Arensman, Spinhoven, & Wolters, 2005).”

“Although ‘‘flashbulb’’ memories might be expected to have been formed for such consequential events as the murder of one’s mother (Brown & Kulik, 1977), even memories of highly salient events are subject to forgetting over time (Hirst et al., 2009; Neisser & Harsh, 1992).”

“…can distort memory for the original event (Crombag, Wagenaar, & van Koppen, 1996; Morgan III, Southwick, Steffian, Hazlett, & Loftus, 2013; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; © 2015 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Deryn Strange dstrange@jjay.cuny.edu John Jay College of…”

“…a number of theorists have instead argued that recollective and fl ashbulb memories are strongly reconstructed in ways that cause them to be very inaccurate representations of the original experience (e.g., Barclay, 1986; Loftus & Loftus, 1980; Neisser, 1982, pp. 43 – 48; Neisser & Harsch, 1992).”

“Moreover, in the cited investigations (Christianson, 1989; McCloskey et al., 1988; Neisser and Harsch, 1992), the accuracy of FM was measured by determining the consistency of the answers that were provided shortly after an event and those answers provided some time afterwards.”

“For example, in research investigating flashbulb memories for salient news events, some have proposed that emotion enhances event recollection (Conway, 1995), whereas others have argued that flashbulb memories are not especially accurate (McCloskey et al., 1988; Neisser and Harsch, 1992).”

“The events that we remember may not have happened the way we remember them (Neisser & Harsch, 1993); they may not have happened at all (Loftus, 2003).”

“For example, studies of flashbulb memories – autobiographical memories for the circumstances of learning about a consequential, surprising event (Brown & Kulik, 1977) – have shown that many recollected details differ over time (Neisser & Harsch, 1992).”