The Influence Of Flashbulb Memory

Loftus and Hyman performed psychology research that showcased that memories have inaccuracies. Because of their help, psychologists understand that memories are not always exact. Memories stimulate different types of responses. In addition, certain memories showcase strong emotions which allow those memories to be remembered longer. These emotions include not only fear and horror, but also joy and excitement. Every person experiences an exciting moment in their life. Whether it is a championship game, where they were during 9/11, or a memorable birthday, everyone undergoes stimulating occurrences. These instances are known as flashbulb memories. They are a type of autonomic encoding that occurs because an unexpected event has a strong emotional association for the person remembering it. The memories tend to have extremely vivid details. Furthermore, flashbulb memories are very meaningful, but the details of the memory can become inaccurate as time goes on.

As a child, Jim experienced his parents winning the lottery. Furthermore, the memory is still important to him. Jim thought he could remember the exact details from that day. …show more content…
These details can also be fabricated due to the misinformation effect. The misinformation effect is the tendency of misleading information to be presented after an event. Additionally, the misinformation effect alters the memories of the event itself. Another concept that alters memories is known as constructive processing. Constructive processing is very common in crime scenes. This is the reason witnesses of crime scenes are not allowed to speak with each otherfollowing the incident. Indeed, details can be altered. Additionally, these types of memories are literally built and reconstructed from the information stored during encoding. Over time this reconstruction causes memories to decay even more. Memory decay is the loss of memory due to the passage of