A Powerful Memory Phenomenon: Vivid Memories of Reception of Public News

Abstract

This paper surveys the long history and the latest developments of flashbulb memory, a term describing vivid memories o f dramatic news or important public events. This interesting phenomenon has inspired multifaceted theoretization including biological, persona] and collective memory-related and narrative explanations as well. Salient remembering of news can be fitted into a larger term of vivid personal memories. Recently, the primary theoretical focus seems to have shifted on the phenomenal nature o f such memories, and in this new approach, a new term, ’recollection’ is preferred to the traditional term ’reconstruction’. Recollection refers to the conscious revival of memories, whose specificity is a function of the stregth of their phenomenological qualities (e.g., perceptual, emotional and mental contents). This approach seems to offer a good explantion for the vividness of memories of personalized/subjectivized public events, and for the belief that these recalled events are real.