Type or dimension? A taxometric investigation of flashbulb memories

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) have been defined as vivid and detailed memory of a reception context under which one first heard of a public and unexpected emotional event. One of the issues still open for research on FBMs is to understand whether this latent construct has to be conceptualised as a continuum with other autobiographical memories, or whether it represents a special cluster of memories. This theoretical distinction has some implications for the measurement of the phenomenon, that could be assessed by a dimensional or categorical (taxonic) model. The current study attempted to provide an empirical answer to the problem of FBM measurement, by adopting a taxometric analysis. The main strength of these analyses is to treat taxonic and dimensional models as two competing hypotheses and to evaluate the relative support for each of them. Taxometric analyses were applied to FBM data for the Pope's death, and results supported the taxonic structure of FBMs.     

Type or dimension? A taxometric investigation of flashbulb memories

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) have been defined as vivid and detailed memory of a reception context under which one first heard of a public and unexpected emotional event. One of the issues still open for research on FBMs is to understand whether this latent construct has to be conceptualised as a continuum with other autobiographical memories, or whether it represents a special cluster of memories. This theoretical distinction has some implications for the measurement of the phenomenon, that could be assessed by a dimensional or categorical (taxonic) model. The current study attempted to provide an empirical answer to the problem of FBM measurement, by adopting a taxometric analysis. The main strength of these analyses is to treat taxonic and dimensional models as two competing hypotheses and to evaluate the relative support for each of them. Taxometric analyses were applied to FBM data for the Pope's death, and results supported the taxonic structure of FBMs.     

Flashbulb memories of the Pope's resignation: Explicit and implicit measures across differing religious groups

In the present paper, we aimed to provide evidence in support of the idea tested in a recent study by Lanciano and colleagues that flashbulb memories (FBMs) are a special class of autobiographical memories that can be assessed through the autobiographical implicit association test (aIAT). FBMs and event memories (EMs) for the news of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI were evaluated in three samples of churchgoer Catholic, non-churchgoer Catholic and Evangelical Italian participants through the traditional self-report measures (specificity/accuracy, confidence, consistency) and aIAT indices. Results confirmed the strength of the association between FBM and true information. The aIAT effect was stronger for FBMs than for EM details, and for Catholic respondents who were the group most concerned by the original event. Furthermore, the use of implicit measures for memory assessment concurs with the traditional self-report indices of FBMs. The present evidence supports the idea that FBMs are special autobiographical memories which remain detailed, certain and consistent over time.     

The emotional and reconstructive determinants of emotional memories: An experimental approach to flashbulb memory investigation

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) are vivid and detailed memories of the reception context of a public emotional event. Brown and Kulik (1977) introduced the label FBM to suggest the idea that individuals are able to preserve knowledge of an event in an indiscriminate way, in analogy with a photograph that preserves all details of a scene. Research work on FBMs has primarily been conducted using a naturalistic approach in order to explore the role of the emotional and reconstructive factors on FBM formation and maintenance. Nevertheless, these studies lack a sufficient control on the factors that might intervene in the process of FBM formation. The contribution of the present studies is addressed to experimentally investigating the role of emotional and reconstructive factors on emotionally charged memories, specifically on FBMs. Paralleling FBM findings, the two studies revealed that simply being in an emotional state allows people to remember all available information, such as irrelevant and unrelated details. Furthermore, the resulting memories are affected by reconstructive processes so that they are not as accurate as their richness of details would suggest.     

Do automatic mental associations detect a flashbulb memory?

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) are defined as detailed memories for the reception context in which people first heard of a public and emotionally relevant event. For many years researchers have been debating whether FBMs can be considered a special class of emotional memories, or whether they suffer the same fate as ordinary autobiographical formations. The debate on the real existence of this special class of memories reflects the difficulty of establishing their accuracy. Three indices have been defined as proxies for FBM accuracy: specificity of recalled details, individuals’ confidence in their memory, and memory consistency over time. However, all approaches to FBM assessment have been based on explicit self-report measures. In two studies we aimed to detect FBMs for two emotional public events, by simultaneously employing explicit traditional FBM measures and implicit measures based on the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT). Jointly considered, the results from the two studies showed that the implicit measures were able to discriminate a FBM, and appeared significantly associated with explicit traditional measures of FBM Specificity, Confidence, and Consistency. Both explicit and implicit assessments concurred to correctly estimate a FBM. Implications for the FBM debate are discussed.     

The role of importance/consequentiality appraisal in flashbulb memory formation: the case of the death of Pope John Paul II

This study investigates how flashbulb memories (FBMs) relative to the death of Pope John Paul II vary according to the persons' evaluation of the event's importance and consequences. In particular, FBMs were investigated in persons who were expected to attribute different degrees of importance/consequentiality to the event as a function of two factors: (1) religious involvement, (2) nationality (Polish, Italian, Swiss). The comparison was made with respect to the following hypothesized determinants of FBMs: surprise, emotional reaction, rehearsal, event memory and especially the attitudes towards the Pope and the appraisal of the importance and the consequences of his death. Structural equation modelling indicates that importance/consequentiality is a fundamental determinant of FBM and is influenced by antecedent personal and social characteristics reflected in the person's attitudes. Moreover, memory consistency seems to be both directly influenced by emotional intensity and indirectly through rehearsal, whereas surprise seems not a critical determinant of FBM. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring the flashbulb-like nature of memories for private events: the flashbulb memory checklist

What do we remember following an emotionally charged event? The assessment of memory characteristics for an emotional event represents one of the most challenging issues in the domain of autobiographical memory. Literature of flashbulb memories (FBMs) provides a crucial contribution on this issue: Following an emotional and unexpected public event, people remember not only central details of the episode, but also irrelevant, peripheral and idiosyncratic details of the reception context in which they learned of the news. The present study was set up to assess the factorial structure (samples 1 and 2) and convergent validity (sample 2) of an FBM checklist, an instrument designed to measure Flashbulb-like features of memories for emotional private events. Factorial analyses account for an oblique two-factor solution – FBM Specificity and Confidence – while correlational analyses support the convergent validity of this instrument. Practical implications are discussed, especially for the credibility assessment of witnesses of emotional events in forensic settings.     

Flashbulb memories for expected events: a test of the emotional‐integrative model

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) are vivid, long‐lasting and consistent recollections for the reception context of shocking and unexpected public news. Only a few studies have assessed FBMs for predictable events. In the present study the emotional‐integrative model is considered to account for FBMs for an expected event, that is, the death of President Mitterrand, across two national groups, that are, French and Belgian citizens. Results showed that FBMs can develop for an expected event; they are affected by its emotional impact and subsequent rehearsal, while surprise did not play a role in their formation. The emotional‐integrative model was confirmed as a promising tool to model datasets on FBMs. It holds for both subsamples, with a better parsimony for Belgian respondents' data. Implications for the debate about the nature of FBMs are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is the Third‐Person Effect Real? A Critical Examination of Rationales,Testing Methods,and Previous Findings of the Third‐Person Effect on Censorship Attitudes

Regarding the effect of the third‐person perception on censorship attitudes, the present study first highlighted logical weaknesses of previously proposed rationales and limitations of previously used statistical models to test the effect. This study reanalyzed data from past research on the effect of the third‐person perception. In Study 1, the average effects of the other‐self perceptual gap in the media influence on censorship attitudes were estimated based on reports from 13 previous studies (total N = 6,414). Study 2 reanalyzed Schmierbach, Boyle, Xu, and McLeod's (2011) correlational data (N = 692). The results of these two studies showed that the presumed effect on others is a stronger predictor of censorship attitudes than the other‐self differential in perceived media effect.     

Flashbulb memories are special after all; in phenomenology,not accuracy

Consistency of flashbulb memories (FBMs) of the 11th September terrorist attacks and of everyday memories (EDMs) of the preceding weekend do not differ, in both cases declining over the following year for a group of Duke University undergraduates. However, ratings of recollection, vividness and other phenomenological properties were consistently higher for FBMs than for EDMs across time. Belief in the accuracy of memory was initially high for both memories, but declined over time only for EDMs. These findings confirm that FBMs are not extraordinarily accurate, but they may systematically differ from EDMs in other meaningful ways. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Autobiographical and event memories for surprising and unsurprising events

Although research converges on the idea that surprise is not essential to form a ‘flashbulb memory’ (FBM), no study has explicitly shown that a FBM that develops from an unexpected event has the same structure as a FBM that develops from an expected event. In the present research, we explored whether there is any substantial difference on veridicality, consistency and confidence in both autobiographical and event memories for surprising and expected events. Two groups of participants were tested for their memories of a surprising (Study I) or an expected (Study II) event at different delays of indexing from the original news. All participants were then re‐tested after 6 months and again after 1 year from the first interview. The same patterns of results were found for both events. Consistent with the ‘narrative and rehearsal’ hypothesis, our results provide direct evidence that surprise does not affect the structure of a FBM. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Episodic and prototype models of category learning

The question of what processes are involved in the acquisition and representation of categories remains unresolved despite several decades of research. Studies using the well-known prototype distortion task (Posner and Keele in J Exp Psychol 77:353–363, 1968) delineate three candidate models. According to exemplar-based models, we memorize each instance of a category and when asked to decide whether novel items are category members or not, the decision is explicitly based on a similarity comparison with each stored instance. By contrast, prototype models assume that categorization is based on the similarity of the target item to an implicit abstraction of the central tendency or average of previously encountered instances. A third model suggests that the categorization of prototype distortions does not depend on pre-exposure to study exemplars at all and instead reflects properties of the stimuli that are easily learned during the test. The four experiments reported here found evidence that categorization in this task is predicated on the first and third of these models, namely transfer at test and the exemplar-based model. But we found no evidence for the second candidate model that assumed that categorization is based on implicit prototype abstraction.     

Cultural variation in the correlates of flashbulb memories: an investigation in five countries

Flashbulb memory (FBM) refers to the vivid memory for the context of learning about a public news event. Past research has identified a number of factors that influence the formation of FBM, such as the importance of the event, the experience of intense emotions, and the amount of post-event rehearsal. Although such factors may be universal in predicting FBM formation across cultures, they may differentially impact FBM given different cultural belief systems and practices. In the present study we investigated the moderating effect of culture for various predictors of FBM in five countries: China, Germany, Turkey, the UK, and the USA. Results indicated that the effects of national importance and rehearsal of the reception context were consistent across cultures. In contrast, culture moderated the effects of personal importance, emotionality, surprise, and event rehearsal. In all cases the effects of these variables were significantly smaller in the Chinese sample.     

Continuous flash suppression and monocular pattern masking impact subjective awareness similarly

Peters and Lau (eLife, 4, e09651, 2015) found that when criterion bias is controlled for, there is no evidence for unconscious visual perception in normal observers, in the sense that they cannot directly discriminate a target above chance without knowing it. One criticism of that study is that the visual suppression method used, forward and backward masking (FBM), may be too blunt in the way it interferes with visual processing to allow for unconscious forced-choice discrimination. To investigate this question, we compared FBM directly to continuous flash suppression (CFS) in a two-interval forced-choice task. Although CFS is popular, and may be thought of as a more powerful visual suppression technique, we found no difference in the degree of perceptual impairment between the two suppression types. To the extent that CFS impairs perception, both objective discrimination and subjective awareness are impaired to similar degrees under FBM. This pattern was consistently observed across three experiments in which various experimental parameters were varied. These findings provide evidence for an ongoing debate about unconscious perception: normal observers cannot perform forced-choice discrimination tasks unconsciously.     

Effects of warm and neutral models on the attention of observational learners

The study was conducted to examine observers' attention to adults following warm and neutral interactions with them. Forty-two preschool and 36 third grade girls interacted with a pair of female models in one of three treatment conditions in which models were, respectively, warm and neutral, neutral and neutral, or warm and warm. Subiects then witnessed the models play a picture-preference game and were asked to recall the models' responses. Analyses of the children's overt attention to the models' responses revealed a greater attention to a warm model when in the presence of both a warm and neutral model and less distraction by nonsocial stimuli when at least one warm model was present. A significant positive correlation was obtained between attention to and recall of the models' responses.     

Priming in deduction: a spatial arrangement task

The mental model theory assumes that people reason by manipulating mental representations of states of the word, called "mental models." In the present study we used a new deduction task based on diagrammatic premises. We show that a premise can prime other premises that induce similar mental models in a way analogous to the case of words with related meanings, which prime one another. We present three experiments. In Experiment 1 we used an evaluation task. In Experiment 2, a construction task was used. The priming effect was obtained in both cases. In a third experiment we show that the priming effect was still present when partcipants were instructed to ignore a prime displayed before the premises. In all three experiments we compared determinate and indeterminate problems and found faster responses in the former.     

A multitrait-multimethod model with minimal assumptions

A new model of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) data sets is presented. It is shown that this model can be defined by only three assumptions in the framework of classical psychometric test theory (CTT). All other properties of the model, particularly the uncorrelated-ness of the trait with the method factors are logical consequences of the definition of the model. In the model proposed there are as many trait factors as different traits considered, but the number of method factors is one fewer than the number of methods included in an MTMM study. The covariance structure implied by this model is derived, and it is shown that this model is identified even under conditions under which other CFA-MTMM models are not. The model is illustrated by two empirical applications. Furthermore, its advantages and limitations are discussed with respect to previously developed CFA models for MTMM data.     

4~7岁儿童绘画摹写的语义编码特点

以二维模型为主对儿童绘画编码特点及发展进程的探讨。研究对象为4—7岁儿童,按年龄分为4组,共163人。主要实验有二：一是选择同一实物的三维和二维两类模型让被试摹写;二是选择语义熟悉程度和语义多寡不同的二维模型让被试摹写。个别实验,实验顺序随机安排。研究结果表明：儿童对维度不同的模型绘画编码具有共同的特点,表现出三种编码形式：其一,将模型的各构件分离,各自独立编码;其二,依模型的典型特征编码;其三,按各模型真实形象编码。儿童对不同维度模型绘画编码发展的进程不同。对二维模型绘画编码水平和发展速度比三维模型提早1年。模型语义的多寡及熟悉程度影响儿童二维模型绘画编码。     

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) recognize spatial and object correspondences between a scale model and its referent

In the present study, the contributions of spatial and object features to chimpanzees' comprehension of scale models were examined. Seven chimpanzees that previously demonstrated the ability to use a scale model as an information source for the location of a hidden item were tested under conditions manipulating the feature correspondence and spatial-relational correspondence between objects in the model and an outdoor enclosure. In Experiment 1, subjects solved the task under two conditions in which one object cue (color or shape) was unavailable, but positional cues remained. Additionally, performance was above chance under a third condition in which both types of object cues, but not position cues, were available. In Experiment 2, 2 subjects solved the task under a condition in which shape and color object cues were simultaneously unavailable. The results suggest that, much like young children, chimpanzees are sensitive to both object and spatial-relational correspondences between a model and its referent.