Vivid memories

Fifty-eight undergraduates each recorded their three clearest autobiographical memories and answered questions about them. The resulting 174 memories were almost all rated to be of high personal importance, but low national importance. In contrast to published results of flashbulb memories cued by events which were specific, nationally important, surprising, and consequential, the ratings collected here covered the scales of surprise and consequentiality in a fairly un$orm manner. The subjects also answered questions about memories cued by 20 events. For each subject, some of these memories were of ‘flashbulb’ clarity and some were not. The clearer memories were more surprising, consequential, and emotional, indicating that these factors are associated with, though not necessary for, vivid memories. In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the study of autobiographical memory (e.g., Ciovitz and Schiffman, 1974; Fyitzgerald, 11980; Franklin and Holding, 1977; Linton, 1975; Robinson, 1976; Rubin, 1980, 1982). As part of this increase, one of the most striking and elusive phenomena in autobiographical memory has been brought into the laboratory for study. Brown and Kulik (1977) managed to study people’s clearest, most vivid autobiographical memories by asking them for their recollections and reactions to surprising, consequential, historical events such as the assassinntion of President Kennedy. They concentrated their study on this small subset of pubiic events in an attempt to obtain memories from the same set of events from many individuals. They required the event cues to be surprising and consequential, as they assumed these properties were central to the phenomenon they wished to study, Brown and Kulik coined the term ‘flashbulb memories’ to describe t?le vivid memories they observed because it suggests *We wish to thank Herb Crovitz, Gregory Lockhead and Ulric Neisser for their help. Support for the research was provided by NSF grant number BNS-8101116. Reprint requests should be sent to: David C. Rubin. Department of Psychology, Duke University. Durham, North Carolina 27706. U.S.A. OOlO-0277/84/$5.00 0 Elsevier Sequoia/Printed in The Netherlands 82 D.C. Rubin and M. Kozin surprise, relatively indiscriminate though not necessarily complete illumination, and brevity. While maintaining the emphasis on individual reactions to historical events, Neisser (1982) has criticized many implications of the concept of flashbulb memories, in particular “(a) that flashbulb memories are accurate; (b) that the process by which the memory is created occurs at the time of the event itself; (c) that surprise, emotionaiity, and similar reactions are closely correlated with the ‘consequentiality’ of an event, and that higher levels of surprise and emotionality lead to good memory; and (d) that the similarities among different flashbulb memories reflect the common characteristics of an underlying neural mechanism” (p. 43). Rather than continue this theoretical debate using a very limited set of examples, the present descriptive and exploratory study will attempt to broaden the data base on which the general phenomenon and the theoretical debate are based. Brown and Kulik define flashbulb memories as “memories for the circumstances in which one first iearncd of a very surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) event” (p. 73). Thcy’impiy that these memories are quite clear and lifelike. OperationaUy, Brown and Kulik consider a report as a flashbulb memory if the subject judges the report to be a flashbulb memory and if the report has information in at least one of the six canonical categories that Brown and Kulik found to be typical of flashbulb memories. While consequentiality and surprise were Brown and Kulik’s prerequisites for a flashbulb memory, the property that makes flashbulb memories interesting is their clear, vivid, almost lifelike property. For instance, seemingly random, minute details that one normally would expect to have forgotten are reported. Here we will use Brown and Kuiik’s dr+inition for a flashbulb memory. In addition, we will define a vivid meniory to be a report that a subject indicate?; is one of his or her clearest, most vivid, most lifelike, autabiographical memories. Operationally, we will use Brown and Kuiik’s first operational criterion for a flashbulb memory as our criterion for a vivid memory; that is, the subject must judge the repart to be of ‘flashbulb’ clarity. Where descriptions are obtained from subjects, Brown and Kulik’s second operational criterion of having information in at least one of six cananical categories will also be used. Thus, our vivid memories will meet the vividness, clarity, and detail requirements of flashbulb memories, but will not bz required to be caused by surprising or consequential events. From both the conceptual and the operational definitions, flashbulb memories are a subset of vivid memories. Two broad relations could emerge. First, ail vivid memories collected could be flashbulb memories. That is, vivid memories may occur only in response to surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) events. This would indicate that Brown and Kuiik’s