The Importance Of Flashbulb Memory

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Memory is an important skill used in every day life, from identifying suspects of a crime to remembering if you turned the oven off before leaving the house. However, the accuracy of human memory is a topic of great debate and some even question whether or not we should trust our memories at all. This essay will argue that flashbulb memory is not reliably accurate when it comes to recalling details of past events because many details have the potential to be forgotten. After discussing an experiment conducted by Schmolck, Buffalo, and Squire that tested the accuracy of flashbulb memories over a period of 32 months, and a study by Talarico and Rubin that compared the accuracy of flashbulb memories to everyday memories, it will become clear that flashbulb memories are certainly not reliably accurate in terms of recalling details of past events.
Paper 1:
In 1995, Schmolck, Buffalo, and Squire (2000) began a study that would test the accuracy of recollections of the O.J. Simpson murder trial and they discovered that flashbulb memories were vulnerable to distortion and inaccuracies over time. 222 undergraduate psychology students at the University of California participated in this study that initially involved recalling how they had first heard the results of the trial on October 6, 1995 (three days after the verdict was released) (Schmolck et al., 2000). The independent variable in this study was the time after the initial event that the follow-up questionnaires were given which was either 15 or 32 months after the event. The dependent variable is the accuracy of the flashbulb memories at the follow-up tests. The second questionnaire, sent out after 15 months, was delivered to half the students, of these only 28 were returned (14 mal...

... middle of paper ...

...re studies. Compare younger participants to older.
- Questionnaires should be sent out to all participants at each interval rather than splitting them into groups.
- Use equal number of males and females.

Finally, after analysing a study by Schmolck, Buffalo, and Squire (2000) that proved that the accuracy of flashbulb memories deteriorates and distortions increase over time, and discussing a study by Talarico and Rubin (2003) that confirmed that flashbulb memories are remembered with no more accuracy than a normal everyday memory, it is clear that flashbulb memory is not reliably accurate when it comes to recalling details of past events because many details have the potential to be forgotten. In future it is recommended that wider age range and an equal number of male and female participants are used to get a reliable cross-section of the general population.

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