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Flashbulb Memory: What to Know About Vivid Recall

Wendy Wisner is a health and parenting writer, lactation consultant (IBCLC), and mom to two awesome sons.

Shaheen Lakhan, MD, PhD, is an award-winning physician-scientist and clinical development specialist.

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Where Are Flashbulb Memories Stored in the Brain?

Why are flashbulb memories so vivid, how do flashbulb memories resurface.

• False Memories

A flashbulb memory is a vivid memory about an emotionally significant event, usually a historic or other notable event. People often experience these memories in photographic detail , and can recall aspects like what they were doing when the event occurred or how they learned about what happened. Flashbulb memories tend to endure over long periods of time, although it’s not clear if people continue to remember the events with accuracy.

Examples of Flashbulb Memory

Flashbulb memories usually involve a public event of importance and surprise. The memories formed aren’t just of the event itself, but circumstances surrounding the event: how you found out about it, who told you, where you were when you found out, and your emotional reaction.

Examples of flashbulb memories that many people share include:

• September 11th
• JFK assassination
• The Challenger explosion
• The fall of the Berlin wall
• Natural disasters like earthquakes
• The death of Princess Diana
• Other significant political assassinations, wars, or noteworthy public occasions

Although flashbulb memories are usually associated with more public events, they also happen after personal events, especially ones that were surprising or pivotal in some way. For example, the memory of the sudden death of a loved one may turn into a flashbulb memory for some people.

What Causes a Flashbulb Memory?

The term “flashbulb memory” was coined by Roger Brown and James Kulik in a 1977 paper published in Cognition . They were studying how people remembered the JFK assassination and noted that these memories were formed with certain qualities. People remembered the JFK assassination with uncanny clarity, including details about where they were at the exact moment they heard, and what their emotional reaction was.

According to Brown and Kulik, there are three main qualities that cause a memory to turn into a flashbulb memory:

• The event must elicit an elevated level of surprise
• The event itself must have a significant level of importance
• The event must cause a heightened emotional response

If these three aspects are not present, or don’t reach significant levels, it’s doubtful that a flashbulb memory will be formed, Brown and Kulik said.

Although flashbulb memories are still being studied, and much of Brown and Kulik’s characterization of them remains accurate, researchers have called into question the clarity of people’s flashbulb memories, noting that it’s common for people to form inaccurate memories of events that caused flashbulb memories, or that the accuracy declines as time goes on.

Researchers are still learning about the biological mechanisms behind flashbulb memories. A 2020 study published in Memory looked at adults undergoing MRI while recalling their flashbulb memories. They found that different parts of the brain seemed to be involved in flashbulb memories, as opposed to more ordinary autobiographical memories.

According to the study, flashbulb memories were more associated with the left side of the brain. Additionally, the amygdala seems to play a significant role in flashbulb memories. A 2018 study also found that the amygdala appears to be a key player when it comes to flashbulb memories.

These findings make sense, as the amygdala is where people store emotional memories.

There are several reasons why flashbulb memories are experienced so vividly. One reason is that flashbulb memories are often events shared by others, and repeated often in news coverage and in history books. This makes our memories of these events feel more vivid and clear to us.

Additionally, these events are often extremely emotionally potent, and form a strong impression on us. In fact, some of the events are associated with personal or public traumas , which may make them easier to attach to our memories. Research has found that our amygdala is involved in flashbulb memories, which is involved in the creation of emotional memories.

Although flashbulb memories involve heightened emotions and often include traumatic experiences, they are not the same as PTSD and don’t involve repressed memories that resurface. The term “flashbulb memories” may be confused with “flashbacks,” which are common in PTSD. Flashbacks refer to traumatic memories that tend to resurface without warning and cause significant distress. However, flashbulb memories are often easily retrieved, and don’t usually cause intense distress.

If you believe you are experiencing a flashback related to PTSD, please reach out to a therapist or mental health counselor. PTSD can cause serious mental health challenges, and impact your ability to function. But there’s hope: treatment is available and effective, including therapy for PTSD and medication to treat the condition.

Can Flashbulb Memories Be False?

One characteristic of people who have flashbulb memories is that they are usually quite confident in the accuracy of their memories, especially if the memories had emotional significance or a high level of emotional attachment. But research has found that flashbulb memories may not be as accurate as the people who experience them believe them to be.

For example, a group of researchers looked at flashbulb memories after the September 11th attacks. The researchers were able to look at how people recalled these events over a ten year period to see how accurate the flashbulb memories were.

What they found was surprising. People’s flashbulb memories were clearest right after the event, but lessened in accuracy within the first year. After that, their forgetfulness of the event stayed pretty much the same, and didn’t change much over the 10 year period. However, their confidence about the accuracy of their memory did not change, and remained high throughout.

Research has also found that although most people remember flashbulb memories with higher accuracy than more common memories, the rate at which they forget is similar in both flashbulb memories and ordinary memories. This decline usually happens in the first year after the event that elicited the flashbulb memory, and whatever inaccuracy the memory acquired remains present when the flashbulb memory is recalled in the future.

Flashbulb memories also often involve something called “time slice confusions.” This involves hearing reported news about the public event, and then incorporating that news into one’s memory of the event.

A Word From Verywell

The characteristics of flashbulb memories and how they work are a fascinating topic. Almost all of us have experienced flashbulb memories as the result of notable and emotionally potent events. It’s important to point out that although flashbulb events aren’t commonly associated with symptoms like PTSD, people who experience a traumatic event may also experience PTSD and other mental health disturbances. Please reach out to a mental health counselor if you are experiencing distress after a difficult event. You aren’t alone and help is out there.

APA Dictionary of Psychology. Flashbulb Memory .

El Haj M, Gandolphe M, Wawrziczny E, et al. Flashbulb memories of Paris attacks: Recall of these events and subjective reliving of these memories in a case with Alzheimer disease . Medicine. 2016;95(46):e5448. doi:10.1097/MD.0000000000005448

Hirst W, Phelps EA. Flashbulb Memories . Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2016;25(1):36-41. doi:10.1177/0963721415622487

Brown R, Kulik J. Flashbulb memories . Cognition. 1977;5(1):73–99. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(77)90018-X

Metternich B, Spanhel K, Schoendube E, et al. Flashbulb memory recall in healthy adults – a functional magnetic resonance imaging study . Memory. 2020;28(4):461-472. doi:10.1080/09658211.2020.1733022

Spanhel K, Wagner K, Geiger MJ, et al. Flashbulb memories: Is the amygdala central? An investigation of patients with amygdalar damage . Neuropsychologia. 2018;111:163-171. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.01.004

Hermans EJ, Battaglia FP, Atsak P, et al. How the amygdala affects emotional memory by altering brain network properties . Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. 2014;112:2-16. doi:10.1016/j.nlm.2014.02.005

Law BM. Seared in our memories . Monitor on Psychology. 2011;42(8):60.

American Psychiatric Association. What is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

Day MV, Ross M. Predicting confidence in flashbulb memories . Memory. 2014;22(3):232-242. doi:10.1080/09658211.2013.778290

Hirst W, Phelps EA, Meksin R, et al. A ten-year follow-up of a study of memory for the attack of September 11, 2001: Flashbulb memories and memories for flashbulb events . Journal of Experimental Psychology. 2015;144(3):604–623. doi:10.1037/xge0000055

By Wendy Wisner Wendy Wisner is a health and parenting writer, lactation consultant (IBCLC), and mom to two awesome sons.

Flashbulb Memory In Psychology: Definition & Examples

Ayesh Perera

B.A, MTS, Harvard University

Ayesh Perera, a Harvard graduate, has worked as a researcher in psychology and neuroscience under Dr. Kevin Majeres at Harvard Medical School.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Exceptionally clear memories of emotionally significant events are called flashbulb memories. They’re called so because they are typically very vivid and detailed, much like a photograph , and often pertain to surprising, consequential, and emotionally arousing events, such as hearing about a national tragedy or experiencing a personal milestone.

Key Takeaways

• A flashbulb memory is a highly vivid and detailed ‘snapshot’ of a moment in which a consequential, surprising, and emotionally arousing piece of news was learned.
• Roger Brown and James Kulik introduced the term ‘flashbulb memory’ in 1977 in their study of individuals’ ability to recall consequential and surprising events.
• Debate centers on whether they are a special case (resistant to forgetting over time) or the same as other memories.
• The photographic model, the comprehensive model, and the emotional-integrative model are some models which have been employed to study the phenomenon of flashbulb memory.
• The vividness and accuracy of flashbulb memories can vary across age and culture.
• The amygdala seems to play a key role in the formation and retrieval of flashbulb memories.
• Relatively little evidence for flashbulb memories as a distinct memory process. They ‘feel’ accurate (we are confident in recall) but are just as prone to forgetting & change as other episodic memories.

A flashbulb memory is an accurate and exceptionally vivid long-lasting memory for the circumstances surrounding learning about a dramatic event. Flashbulb Memories are memories that are affected by our emotional state.

The analogy of a flashbulb describes how we can often remember where you were, what you were doing, how you were informed, and how you reacted as if the whole scene had been “illuminated” by a flashbulb.

Roger Brown and James Kulik coined the term ‘flashbulb memory’ in 1977. While the term ‘flashbulb memory’ implies shock, illumination, brevity, and detail, a memory of this type is far from complete.

Moreover, the fundamental characteristics of a flashbulb memory are informant (who broke the news), own affect (how they felt), aftermath (importance of the event), another affect (how others felt), ongoing activity (what they were doing) and place (where they where when the event happened).

Examples of Flashbulb Memory

Flashbulb memories are often associated with important historical or autobiographical events. Typical ‘flashbulb’ events are dramatic, unexpected, and shocking.

Here are several real-life examples of flashbulb memories:

• Remembering where you were and what you were doing when you heard about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
• The moment you heard about the death of a beloved public figure like Princess Diana or Michael Jackson.
• Recalling the exact circumstances when you learned about a significant world event, such as the election of the first Black U.S. president, Barack Obama.
• Remembering the moment you were informed about a family member’s sudden and unexpected death.
• Recalling where you were and what you were doing when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic in 2020.

Why do Flashbulb Memories Occur

Brown and Kulik (1977) constructed the special-mechanism hypothesis, which supposedly demonstrated the existence of a distinct special neural mechanism for flashbulb memories.

This mechanism was named “now print”, because it was as if the whole episode was a snapshot and imprinted in memory as such.

Brown and Kulik argued that experiences and events which exceeded the critical levels of consequentiality and surprise caused this mechanism of neural memory to register a permanent record of the event. Surprise refers to not anticipating the event and consequentiality refers to the level of importance of the event.

Notably, however, they held that while flashbulb memories are fixed, they are not always necessarily accessible from long-term memory (Cohen, McCloskey & Wible, 1990).

The special-mechanism hypothesis of Brown and Kulik further held that the features of flashbulb memories are distinct from those of ordinary mechanisms of memory (Brown & Kulik, 1977).

Detail, vividness, accuracy, and resistance to forgetting were initially identified as the distinct properties of flashbulb memories. However, over time, the validity of these properties has been debated, and several models have been subsequently developed to understand and explain the phenomenon of flashbulb memory (Er, 2003).

The Photographic Model

The photographic model posits that a stimulus experience can engender a flashbulb memory only with a significant amount of shock, emotional arousal, and consequentiality (Brown & Kulik, 1977). The element of surprise initially helps register an event in memory, and the event’s importance would subsequently trigger emotional arousal.

The consequentiality of the memory may be determined by the event’s impact on one’s own life. Finally, the properties of surprise, emotional arousal, and consequentiality would impact the frequency of rehearsal of a certain flashbulb memory, thereby possibly strengthening or weakening the associations to and accounts of the experience.

The Comprehensive Model

The comprehensive model emphasizes upon the importance of incorporating a larger sample of subjects from a greater diversity of backgrounds (Conway, Anderson, Larsen, Donnelly, McDaniel, McClelland, Rawles & Logie, 1994).

Additionally, unlike the photographic model, which follows a sequential process in the development of a flashbulb account, the comprehensive model incorporates the interconnected nature of the pertinent variables.

For instance, interest in and knowledge of the experience may impact the level of consequentiality, which in turn, may affect one level of emotional arousal.

All these factors would impact the frequency of rehearsal, and finally, their aggregate impact would influence the strength of the associations.

The Emotional-Integrative Model

The emotional-integrative model incorporates elements of the photographic model and the comprehensive model (Finkenauer, Luminet, Gisle, El-Ahmadi, Van Der Linden & Philippot, 1998).

Like the photographic model, this model posits that the degree of shock constitutes the initial registration of the event.

Moreover, according to this model, the elements of surprise and consequentialism, as well as one’s attitude, can trigger an emotional state which directly helps create a flashbulb memory.

Furthermore, this emotional state, in turn, contributes to the rehearsal of the event, thereby strengthening the association and forming a flashbulb memory.

Herein, the formation of the flashbulb memory is significantly influenced by the individual’s emotional relationship to the particular event (Curci & Luminet, 2009).

What Research Suggests

A common approach seems to characterize studies of flashbulb memory. Researchers generally conduct their studies of flashbulb memory following a surprising and consequential public event (Neisser, 1982).

Initially, the participants are tested via interview or survey questions immediately after the event. Herein, the subjects are often expected to describe their personal relationship to the event.

Afterward, the participants would be divided into different groups and tested for a second time—each group at a different time.

For instance, one group may be tested 12 months later, while another group may be tested 18 months after the event (Schmolck, Buffalo & Squire, 2000). This approach can expose memory decay and the rate of accuracy of the relevant flashbulb memories.

Brown and Kulik (1977) found that participants tended to have vivid memories of political assassinations: 75% of black people who were asked about the assassination of Martin Luther King could recall it, compared to only 33% of white people. This shows the importance of relevance.

Several studies imply that although flashbulb memories may be recollected with great confidence and vividness, they might not be as accurate as most people expect them to be.

For instance, a study conducted among 54 Duke University students in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks suggests that the accuracy of retrieval declines over time for flashbulb memories in the same way as it does for everyday memories (Talarico & Rubin, 2003).

Moreover, a study that examined the flashbulb memories of the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion showed that despite the participants’ high level of confidence in their recollection of the event, their actual recollections were not accurate three years after the tragedy (Neisser & Harsh, 1992).

Thus, it is possible that flashbulb memories rank higher not necessarily in their accuracy but in their perceived accuracy. However, there are other research findings that suggest that flashbulb memories are more accurate than everyday memories because consequentiality, personal involvement, distinction, and proximity can enhance recall (Sharot, Delgado & Phelps, 2004).

Neurology Related to Flashbulb Memory

Studies have shown that emotional arousal engenders neurohormonal changes which impact the amygdala (Dolcos, Labar & Cabeza, 2005). The amygdala , thus, seems to play a role in encoding and retrieving the memories of significant public events.

The amygdala’s function in memory is related to the increase in arousal caused by an experience (McGaugh, 2004).

This suggests that what influences arousal possibly impacts the nature of memories. Moreover, as the amygdala’s involvement with episodic memory is explicitly linked to physiological arousal, the intensity of the arousal may differ based on an individual’s personal relationship to an event (Phelps et al., 2006).

Individual Differences

Younger adults in general, are more likely to form flashbulb memories than older ones (Cohen, Conway & Maylor, 1993). Moreover, younger adults and their older counterparts recall flashbulb memories for different reasons.

For instance, among the younger ones, the chief predictor was emotional connectedness to an experience. Among the older adults, however, the reliance on rehearsal seemed to be the more salient determining factor. Additionally, older adults demonstrated a greater tendency to forget the context of the experience.

However, if older adults had been severely affected by the relevant event, then they would be able to form flashbulb memories that are as detailed as the flashbulb memories formed by their younger counterparts (Kvavilashvili, Mirani, Schlagman, Erskine & Kornbrot, 2010) (Conway, Skitka, Hemmerich & Kershaw, 2009).

For instance, older adults who were directly affected by the 9/11 attacks recollected memories that, in detail, resembled the recollections of younger adults. Additionally, older adults also tend to have an enhanced recollection of experiences from their early adulthood and adolescence.

This phenomenon is described as the ‘reminiscence bump’. As a result of the ‘reminiscence bump,’ older adults can retain flashbulb memories from their adolescence and early adulthood better than flashbulb memories from the recent past (Denver, Lane & Cherry, 2010).

In general, the factors which impact flashbulb memories are considered to be independent of cultural variation. Proximity to an event and personal involvement are generally regarded as the chief determining factors in memory formation.

However, some research suggests that the vividness of flashbulb memories may be influenced by cultural factors (Kulkofsky, Wang, Conway, Hou, Aydin, Johnson & Williams, 2011).

For instance, a study that evaluated the formation of flashbulb memories in China, the United States, Germany, Turkey, and the United Kingdom showed a notable variation in retrieval.

The participants from the United Kingdom and the United States were able to report more memories within the allotted time span than the participants from Turkey, China, and Germany.

Moreover, the Chinese participants were less impacted by factors associated with personal involvement and proximity. Additionally, the effects of surprise and emotional intensity too varied across the countries.

Relationship to Autobiographical Memory

Flashbulb memory has long been classified as a subset of autobiographical memory. Autobiographical memory involves’ one’s everyday life experiences (Davidson & Glisky, 2002).

However, the memory of neutral autobiographical experiences such as an exam or a picnic is considered not as accurate as an emotionally arousing flashbulb memory involving one’s experiences closely tied to an issue of public concern or a national calamity.

Moreover, a comparative analysis of flashbulb memories and non-flashbulb memories demonstrates that while the former are encoded incidentally, the latter can be encoded specifically (Kvavilashvili, Mirani, Schlagman, Erskine & Kornbrot, 2010).

It has also been observed that although vividness accompanies both these types of memory, the vividness of non-flashbulb memories decreases over time—unlike that of flashbulb memories.

Additionally, while ordinary autobiographical memories involve a dimensional structure containing every level of autobiographical information, flashbulb memories stem apparently from a more densely integrated area of autobiographical information (Lanciano & Curci, 2012).

Additionally, while flashbulb memories require episodic memories , everyday memories are semantic recollections (Curci & Lanciano, 2009).

Why are flashbulb memories so vivid?

Flashbulb memories are so vivid because they are often associated with highly emotional events, which can heighten attention and deepen memory encoding. They involve strong emotional reactions, typically from surprise or shock, which stimulate the amygdala, a brain structure involved in emotion and memory, enhancing the recall of the event’s details.

Brown, A. (1987). Metacognition, executive control, self-regulation, and other more mysterious mechanisms. Metacognition, motivation, and understanding .

Cohen, G., Conway, M. A., & Maylor, E. A. (1994). Flashbulb memories in older adults . Psychology and Aging, 9 (3), 454.

Cohen, N. J., McCloskey, M., & Wible, C. G. (1990). Flashbulb memories and underlying cognitive mechanisms: Reply to Pillemer.

Conway, A. R., Skitka, L. J., Hemmerich, J. A., & Kershaw, T. C. (2009). Flashbulb memory for 11 September 2001 . Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 23 (5), 605-623.

Conway, M. A., Anderson, S. J., Larsen, S. F., Donnelly, C. M., McDaniel, M. A., McClelland, A. G., … & Logie, R. H. (1994). The formation of flashbulb memories . Memory & Cognition, 22 (3), 326-343.

Curci, A., & Lanciano, T. (2009). Features of autobiographical memory: Theoretical and empirical issues in the measurement of flashbulb memory . The Journal of General Psychology, 136 (2), 129-152.

Curci, A., & Luminet, O. (2009). Flashbulb memories for expected events: a test of the emotional‐integrative model . Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 23 (1), 98-114.

Davidson, P. S., & Glisky, E. L. (2002). Is flashbulb memory a special instance of source memory? Evidence from older adults . Memory, 10 (2), 99-111.

Denver, J. Y., Lane, S. M., & Cherry, K. E. (2010). Recent versus remote: Flashbulb memory for 9/11 and self-selected events from the reminiscence bump . The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 70 (4), 275-297.

Dolcos, F., LaBar, K. S., & Cabeza, R. (2005). Remembering one year later: role of the amygdala and the medial temporal lobe memory system in retrieving emotional memories . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102 (7), 2626-2631.

Er, N. (2003). A new flashbulb memory model applied to the Marmara earthquake . Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 17(5) , 503-517.

Finkenauer, C., Luminet, O., Gisle, L., El-Ahmadi, A., Van Der Linden, M., & Philippot, P. (1998). Flashbulb memories and the underlying mechanisms of their formation: Toward an emotional-integrative model . Memory & cognition, 26 (3), 516-531.

Kulkofsky, S., Wang, Q., Conway, M. A., Hou, Y., Aydin, C., Mueller-Johnson, K., & Williams, H. (2011). Cultural variation in the correlates of flashbulb memories: An investigation in five countries . Memory, 19 (3), 233-240.

Kvavilashvili, L., Mirani, J., Schlagman, S., Erskine, J. A., & Kornbrot, D. E. (2010). Effects of age on phenomenology and consistency of flashbulb memories of September 11 and a staged control event . Psychology and Aging, 25 (2), 391.

Lanciano, T., & Curci, A. (2012). Type or dimension? A taxometric investigation of flashbulb memories . Memory, 20 (2), 177-188.

McGaugh, J. L. (2004). The amygdala modulates the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing experiences. Annu. Rev. Neurosci., 27 , 1-28.

Neisser, U., & Harsch, N. (1992). Phantom flashbulbs: False recollections of hearing the news about Challenger .

Neisser, U. (1982). Snapshots or benchmarks. Memory observed: Remembering in natural contexts , 43-48.

Phelps, E. A. (2006). Emotion and cognition: insights from studies of the human amygdala . Annu. Rev. Psychol., 57 , 27-53.

Schmolck, H., Buffalo, E. A., & Squire, L. R. (2000). Memory distortions develop over time: Recollections of the OJ Simpson trial verdict after 15 and 32 months. Psychological Science, 11 (1), 39-45.

Sharot, T., Delgado, M. R., & Phelps, E. A. (2004). How emotion enhances the feeling of remembering . Nature neuroscience, 7 (12), 1376-1380.

Talarico, J. M., & Rubin, D. C. (2003). Confidence, not consistency, characterizes flashbulb memories . Psychological science, 14 (5), 455-461.

Further Information

McCloskey, M., Wible, C. G., & Cohen, N. J. (1988). Is there a special flashbulb-memory mechanism?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117 (2), 171.

Phelps, E. A., & Sharot, T. (2008). How (and why) emotion enhances the subjective sense of recollection. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17 (2), 147-152.

Hirst, W., Phelps, E. A., Meksin, R., Vaidya, C. J., Johnson, M. K., Mitchell, K. J., … & Olsson, A. (2015). A ten-year follow-up of a study of memory for the attack of September 11, 2001: Flashbulb memories and memories for flashbulb events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144 (3), 604

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Flashbulb Memories

Introduction, general overviews.

• Methodology
• The Special Mechanism Theory
• Phenomenology and Other Characteristics
• Emotional Intensity
• Emotional Valence
• Memory for Emotional Reactions to Flashbulb-Memory-Inducing Events
• Other Initiating Conditions/Predictors
• Long Long-Term Memory
• Culture and Social Identity
• Across the Lifespan
• Social Sharing
• Neuroscientific Approaches
• Event Memory

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• Autobiographical Memories
• False Memory
• Implicit versus Explicit Memory
• Interviewing in Forensic Settings
• Repressed and Recovered Memories
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Flashbulb Memories by William Hirst , Jonathan Koppel , Robert Meksin LAST REVIEWED: 29 October 2013 LAST MODIFIED: 29 October 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0071

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) are memories for the circumstances in which one learned of a public, emotionally charged event. As Brown and Kulik noted in their seminal Flashbulb Memories ( Brown and Kulik 1977 , cited under General Overviews ), FBMs are vivid, detailed, confidently held, and seemingly impervious to forgetting. Why, Brown and Kulik wondered, should people remember something of such little consequence—the event may be consequential but is the circumstance of learning of the event also consequential? Why should the quality of these memories be superior to that of ordinary autobiographical memories? FBMs are often contrasted with event memories (EMs), that is, memories for facts about the public event. In an attempt to answer these questions, psychologists have studied events of consequence to the general public, for example, assassinations, such as that of John F. Kennedy, public disasters, such as the Loma Prieta earthquake, and major political upheavals, such as the 9/11 terrorist attack. They have also investigated events consequential to only a small group of people, such as the death of a friend or relative. Researchers have mainly focused on two related issues: First, what are the mechanisms accounting for FBMs? For Brown and Kulik, the special quality of FBMs suggested that they involved special memory mechanisms, but they had no means of assessing at least one of the central features of FBMs that made them special: their seeming imperviousness to forgetting. Subsequent to Brown and Kulik, researchers have corrected this lacunae, collecting data about the circumstances of learning of an event shortly after it occurs and then after a substantial delay (sometimes years). At least with regard to the rate of forgetting, many researchers now claim that FBMs are more similar than they are different from ordinary autobiographical memories. They assert that it is unnecessary to posit a “special mechanism”—“ordinary” memory mechanisms will do. The second issue dominating discussion about FBMs concerns initiating conditions. Not all public, emotionally charged events lead to the formation of FBMs. Moreover, the means by which FBMs acquire their tell-tale characteristics may differ across memories. Why does an American remember, for instance, the circumstances of hearing about the attack of 9/11 but not the appointment of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court? That is, why do people form FBMs for the former event but not the latter? Is there something special about the event that leads to an FBM? Does the encoding and retrieval of FBMs differ from the encoding and retrieval of the circumstances of learning of non-flashbulb events? What are the different routes that lead to the formation of an FBM? Questions such as these allow psychologists to explore how the processing underlying the formation and retention of FBMs might differ from ordinary autobiographical memories, assuming that no “special” mechanism is involved. More recent work has begun to examine EMs. Moreover, the public nature of flashbulb events has also led to a discussion about their relationship to social identity and the influence of culture.

The works cited here provide an excellent overview of the FBM phenomenon. The seminal FBM article is that of Brown and Kulik 1977 , which described a questionnaire study in which participants were asked to report the circumstances in which they first learned of surprising, consequential public events, such as the iconic example of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Brown and Kulik sparked the first wave of FBM research over the next decade. Winograd and Neisser 1992 , an edited volume, provides an excellent overview of this early FBM research, including chapters on FBMs for the Challenger explosion and critical analyses of the flashbulb memory hypothesis, that is, Brown and Kulik’s claim that FBMs are a product of special memory processes. Conway 1995 provides another useful, book-length survey of early FBM research, reviewing the work conducted to that point and focusing on the evidence both for and against the flashbulb memory hypothesis. Several years after Conway 1995 , Pillemer 1998 argued that, though it may seem paradoxical that we form such vivid memories for simply learning of important events, FBMs in fact serve important memory functions. The decade following Pillemer 1998 saw a surge in FBM research, spurred in part by the terrorist attack of 9/11, which provided fertile ground for FBM studies. Luminet and Curci 2009 , an edited volume that includes contributions from many leading FBM researchers, updates Winograd and Neisser 1992 and provides an excellent overview of the state of affairs following this period of intense activity. One important chapter in Luminet and Curci 2009 is Pillemer 2009 , which reviews the ways in which FBMs, as memories of events that are not experienced directly, possess a unique set of properties. Schmidt 2012 advances the field by including FBMs in a broader theoretical account of why we form particularly vivid memories for some types of events, including not only FBMs, but also those such as memories for emotional events and memory for humor. Lastly, although most FBM studies have looked at events that affect large groups, such as nations, we should note that several researchers have examined FBMs for events affecting smaller groups, such as a family or a circle of friends. Articles addressing memory for such events include Mahmood, et al. 2004 and Mackay and Bluck 2010 .

Brown, R., and J. Kulik. 1977. Flashbulb memories. Cognition 5.1: 73–99.

DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(77)90018-X

The seminal documentation of the FBM phenomenon, reporting on a study in which many consequential, surprising events were found to yield FBMs in a high proportion of participants. The authors present the flashbulb memory hypothesis, but they were subsequently criticized for implying that FBMs are unerringly accurate (see Neisser 1982 , cited under Phenomenology and Other Characteristics ).

Conway, M. A. 1995. Flashbulb memories . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Conway presents a useful review and evaluation of FBM research to that point. He focuses particularly on the evidence to date regarding the flashbulb memory hypothesis, giving an even-handed account of both sides of the argument.

Luminet, O., and A. Curci, eds. 2009. Flashbulb memories: New issues and new perspectives . New York: Psychology Press.

This edited volume represents an invaluable update to Winograd and Neisser 1992 . Important contributions include Luminet’s chapter on the competing models of FBM formation, Talarico and Rubin’s chapter on the mechanisms underlying FBMs, Berntsen’s chapter on FBMs and social identity, and Pillemer 2009 .

Mackay, M. M., and S. Bluck. 2010. Meaning-making in memories: A comparison of memories of death-related and low point life experiences. Death Studies 34.8: 715–737.

DOI: 10.1080/07481181003761708

Mackay and Bluck extend FBM research to events affecting only small groups of people by looking at meaning-making in death-related memories, such as one’s memory of the death of a parent.

Mahmood, D., D. Manier, and W. Hirst. 2004. Memory for how one learned of multiple deaths from AIDS: Repeated exposure and distinctiveness. Memory & Cognition 32.1: 125–134.

DOI: 10.3758/BF03195825

Just as Mackay and Bluck 2010 look at memories for more private events than those that are typically the subject of FBM research, Mahmood, et al. do the same here, in examining gay men’s FBMs for friends who had died of AIDS.

Pillemer, D. B. 1998. Momentous events, vivid memories . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.

Pillemer provides a functional analysis of why we form vivid memories of momentous events from our lives, including FBMs, in arguing that such memories help us learn from experience and form a meaningful life story.

Pillemer, D. B. 2009. “Hearing the news” versus “being there”: Comparing flashbulb memories and recall of first-hand experiences. In Flashbulb memories: New issues and new perspectives . Edited by O. Luminet and A. Curci, 125–140. New York: Psychology Press.

In this chapter, Pillemer delineates some of the unique properties of FBMs, compared to memories of events that are experienced directly, providing a comprehensive review of research to date addressing the issue.

Schmidt, S. R. 2012. Extraordinary memories for exceptional events . New York: Psychology Press.

Schmidt provides a broad theoretical account of why some types of memories stand out as being particularly vivid. He includes in his discussion not only FBMs, but also memories for emotional events, memories for bizarre imagery, and memory for humor.

Winograd, E., and U. Neisser, eds. 1992. Affect and accuracy in recall: Studies of “flashbulb” memories . New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511664069

The first edited volume on FBMs, presenting a comprehensive survey of the early FBM research. One highlight is Neisser and Harsch’s landmark study demonstrating high levels of inconsistency in FBMs for the Challenger explosion, contrary to the implications in Brown and Kulik 1977 regarding the accuracy of FBMs.

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• NOT EXACTLY ROCKET SCIENCE

9/11 memories reveal how flashbulb memories are made in the brain

I have only ever seen one car crash and I remember it with crystal clarity. I was driving home along a motorway and a car heading the opposite way simply veered into the central reservation. Its hood crumpled like so much paper, its back end lifted clear off the tarmac and it spun 180 degrees before crashing back down in a cloud of dust. All of this happened within the space of a second, so the details may be different to what I remember. But the emotions I felt at the time are still vivid – the shock of the sight, the fear for the passengers, the confusion over what had happened.

Many studies have shown that peoples’ memories become particularly clear when it comes to traumatic or shocking events. Even learning about a shocking event, rather than witnessing it first-hand, can produce unusually clear recollections. Many of us still remember where we where when we learned that famous figures like Princess Diana or John F. Kennedy had died (I found out about Diana on the toilet).

Scientists have suggested that this type of event triggers a process that produces a very specific and exceptionally vivid type of memory called a ‘ flashbulb memory ‘. This concept has been kicking around since the 1970s, but the evidence that flashbulb memories actually exist is inconsistent.

Tali Sharot and colleagues from New York University decided to find some proper answers by studying the brain activity of people remembering a traumatic event. Doing such experiments would normally be ethically impossible – you cannot after all willingly traumatise someone in the name of science. But Sharot did not need to – unfortunately for us, the twenty-first century has already provided its fair share of traumas.

On September 11, 2001, the people of New York experienced terror and devastation on a massive scale. If any event led to the formation of flashbulb memories, this one would. Sharot recruited 24 people who had witnessed the World Trade Centre attacks first-hand and asked them to remember either the attacks, or a random event from another summer.

She found that people who were in Downtown Manhattan near the attacks had distinctly different memories than those who were twice as far away in Midtown. The Midtown group recalled their 9/11 memories in the same way as their generic ones. But the Downtown group remembered their 9/11 experiences more vividly, strongly and confidently and gave both longer and more detailed descriptions. They reported seeing the towers “burning in red flames”, smelling the smoke and hearing “the cries of people”.

Not content with relying on descriptions, Sharot used a brain scanner to see if these differences were mirrored in the volunteers’ brains – specifically, in a small region called the amygdala , the brain’s emotional control centre. The amygdala affects how memories are stored in the long-term and animal studies have shown that this storage is influenced by stress hormones. Sure enough, when asked them to think about 9/11, the Downtown group showed much greater activity in their left amygdala, while the Midtown group did not.

Despite these results, Sharot is still tentative about concluding that flashbulb memories, as they are classically defined, exist. Nonetheless, her results clearly show that experiencing a shocking event yields a very different and exceptionally vivid type of memory than the humdrum occurrences of daily life. These memories – flashbulb or not – are formed through a special mental route which involves the amygdala.

And Sharot’s brain scans turned up something more unexpected. When the Downtown group thought about 9/11, they also showed much lower activity than normal in the parahippocampal cortex. This part of the brain is thought to be involved in processing and recognising details of a scene or event. If its neurons are dimmed during shocking situations, this could explain why people who experience surprising events remember how they felt, but cannot reliably provide details.

During the tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Meneses in 2005, eyewitnesses proved to be wildly inaccurate, with first-hand accounts of his clothing, police action, and the number of shots fired clearly contradicting each other. If emotions are prized over details in memories of shocking events, how much value can we truly place on eyewitness accounts?

Reference:   T. Sharot, E. A. Martorella, M. R. Delgado, E. A. Phelps (2007). How personal experience modulates the neural circuitry of memories of September 11 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (1), 389-394 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0609230103

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What Are Flashbulb Memories?

What were you doing when you learned that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated? The event was unlikely to have been a significant one for you. It obviously was a significant event for people at the time, though, as evidenced by an 1899 study by psychologist F.W. Colegrove that recorded their experiences. Colegrove found that despite 33 years of distance from the event, people reported their whereabouts including small details of the occasion with great confidence.

Much later, in 1977, Roger Brown and James Kulik asked people to report what they were doing when they heard that John Kennedy was shot in Dallas. They concluded that there is “hardly a man now alive” who cannot recall the circumstances in which they learned that Kennedy was assassinated. Such detailed reports were termed “flashbulb memories” by the investigators, who commented that it was as if a flashbulb had gone off capturing a fine-grained picture of the details surrounding the event.

They proposed that these highly emotional, vivid memories might be caused by a different mechanism from the processes underlying the formation of other autobiographical memories. They labeled the mechanism print now , underscoring the arguably indelible, vivid, and elaborated nature of flashbulb memories. They also suggested that such “flashbulbs” are more likely for events that are personally more consequential. In support of this claim, they found that only 13 of 40 Caucasian participants had a flashbulb memory for hearing that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, compared to 30 of 40 African American participants.

Psychologist Ulric Neisser cast doubt on the validity of such supposed flashbulb memories by describing one of his own. “For many years I have remembered how I heard the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurred the day before my 13th birthday,” he wrote. “I recall sitting in the living room of our house — we only lived in that house for one year, but I remember it well — listening to a baseball game on the radio. The game was interrupted by an announcement of the attack, and I rushed upstairs to tell my mother.” He goes on to say that the memory had gone on so long and was so vivid that he never questioned it until he realized its absurdity. In particular, it dawned on him that of course nobody broadcasts baseball games in December, which was the month in which the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred.

More formal evidence suggesting that flashbulb memories may often be invalid was provided by the results of a study by Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch on recollections of the space shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986. The morning after the event, first-year college students wrote a description of how they heard the news, and then answered questions based on the categories of experience used by Brown and Kulik, such as: What time was it? How did you hear about it? Where were you? What were you doing? Who told you? How did you feel about it? Two and a half years later, the same students, now seniors, wrote a further description of how they had heard the news and answered the same questions about their experience.

The results revealed large differences between the original and later reports for many of the participants. A group of judges measured the consistency of the reports by estimating the extent of such changes; they found that the consistency was generally low, with a mean score of 2.95 out of a possible 7. Eleven of the 40 participants had a score of 0, having changed their answers to all the questions! Despite the changes, the participants were highly confident in the accuracy of their reports.

The consistency of reported flashbulb memories declined over a 10-year period, but the participants’ confidence in their accuracy remained high.

Flashbulb memories are defined as those related to learning about some shocking event, and a number of studies have compared these memories with “event memories” for the objective details of the occurrence (e.g., that there were four airplanes involved in the 9/11 attack). One such investigation examined flashbulb memories for the 9/11 attack over a 10-year period. Notably, that investigation included 15 coauthors, allowing for the comparison of reports from different geographic regions. As it happened, large differences across geographic areas were not found except that flashbulb memories were more likely in New York City than elsewhere.

The results showed that both flashbulb and event memories declined rapidly across the first year, but did not do so appreciably over the following years. As in other studies, the consistency of reported flashbulb memories declined over a 10-year period, but the participants’ confidence in their accuracy remained high, whereas the confidence for details of event memories declined. The inconsistencies that occurred during reports of flashbulb memories were likely to be repeated in later reports rather than corrected. Inaccurate event memories were quite likely to be corrected, however, possibly as a result of people viewing media reports.

Studies have also attempted to pin down the crucial components of flashbulb memories, with likely candidates including surprise, the distinctiveness of the event, the consequences for the person, and their resulting emotional state. In the words of investigators, “Consistent findings have proven elusive,” but it seems to us that the major recurring characteristics of such memories are surprise and shock, and often an incident concerning some well-known public figure.

Commenting on the nature of flashbulb memories, Neisser wrote that two narratives that are normally kept separate — the course of both history and our lives — are momentarily put into alignment. One widely agreed-on difference between everyday autobiographical memories and flashbulb memories is that confidence in flashbulb memories remains high despite the decline in their consistency, whereas event memories decline in both consistency and confidence over time. The vividness, elaborateness, and ease of retrieval of flashbulb memories likely account in part for the high confidence assigned to them. Again, memory is not indelible although it is sometimes thought to be so.

Fergus Craik taught in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto and then worked at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto until his retirement. He is a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Larry Jacoby was a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

This article is excerpted from their book “ Memory ,” in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.

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The days we never forget: Flashbulb memories across the life span in Alzheimer’s disease

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Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by autobiographical memory deficits, with the ability to retrieve episodic-rich memories being particularly affected. Here, we investigated the influence of AD on a specific subtype of episodic memories known as flashbulb memories (i.e., the ability to remember the personal circumstances for the reception of important news events). We examined the frequency, characteristics, and the temporal distribution of flashbulb memories across the life span. To this aim, 28 older adults diagnosed with AD and a matched sample of 29 healthy older controls were probed for flashbulb memories for two historical events from each decade of their lives. They also estimated the subjective degree of reexperiencing for the memories reported. AD participants showed impaired access to flashbulb memories, the frequency of reported memories being lower than for healthy older adults. However, qualitative aspects of AD participants’ flashbulb memories were quite similar to those of the controls, as no group differences were obtained with respect to the canonical categories or degree of reexperience. AD participants’ flashbulb memories clustered during the early years of their life, consistent with a reminiscence bump, whereas healthy controls also reported memories dated to later lifetime periods. Our results suggest that probing for personal memories of important public events may serve as a powerful cue for detailed episodic memories in AD.

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One of the earliest manifestations of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is episodic memory loss, which has largely been attributed to medial temporal lobe (MTL) atrophy (Tromp et al., 2015 ). Episodic memory refers to memory for personal experienced events and their spatiotemporal context and is accompanied by a subjective sense of reexperiencing the event, known as autonoetic consciousness (Tulving, 1985 ). Although, episodic memory deficits have been consistently documented, with individuals with AD experiencing difficulties recalling contextual details (e.g., Greene et al., 1995 ; Hou et al., 2005 ; Ivanoiu et al., 2006 ; Leyhe et al., 2009 ) and an impaired capacity to mentally reexperience past events (e.g., Irish et al., 2011 ; Piolino et al., 2003 ), less is known about a particular subtype of episodic memories, known as flashbulb memories (FBMs), and the degree to which they are disrupted by the disease.

The term FBM was introduced by Brown and Kulik ( 1977 ) to account for vivid, detailed, and long-lasting memories for the circumstances in which one first learn about surprising and highly emotional public or personal events. Prominent examples include the assassination of President Kennedy, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, and the September 11 terrorist attacks (Luminet & Curci, 2009 ). A core feature of FBMs is the recall of contextual and often irrelevant information, including where one was located and what one was doing, when receiving the news, or perceptual details about the weather or clothes worn at the time. Although FBMs are prone to forgetting and distortions, people often retain these memories over long retention intervals, with a strong sense of recollection, that is, with a high degree of vividness, sense of reliving and confidence (e.g., Berntsen & Thomsen, 2005 ; Conway et al., 2009 ; Talarico & Rubin, 2003 ). Surprisingly, relatively little is known as to how AD affects the ability to retain FBMs, despite some of their defining characteristics (e.g., episodic details) being especially affected by the disease.

So far, studies examining FBM in AD have focused on anterograde memory for emotional public events (Budson et al., 2004 , 2007 ; Çebi et al., 2020 ; El Haj et al., 2016 ; Ikeda et al., 1998 ; Mori et al., 1999 ; Thompson et al., 2004 ; for reviews, see Broster et al., 2012 ; Tat et al., 2018 ), and not examined retrograde amnesia for FBM events. The research on anterograde amnesia provides evidence that individuals with AD retain some ability to encode and consolidate personal memories of public events. For instance, Ikeda et al. ( 1998 ) showed that 86.3% of AD participants remembered the 1995 Kobe earthquake after 2 months, compared with only 31.4% remembering a distinctive, but less emotional event (an fMRI examination) that occurred during the same period. However, whether these memories can be conceptualized as FBMs remains debated (for reviews, see Broster et al., 2012 ; Tat et al., 2018 ). Budson et al. ( 2007 ) examined FBM consistency of the September 11 attacks across time in AD and healthy aging. Compared with controls, AD participants showed impaired recall in the weeks following the attack and more rapid forgetting between the initial assessment and a 3-month follow-up. However, like controls, AD participants’ personal recall remained relatively stable from 3 months to 1 year after the event. The authors speculated that the primary memory deficit in AD was attributable to impaired encoding and more rapid forgetting, but that once memories were consolidated, forgetting occurred at similar rates as in healthy aging (Budson et al., 2007 ). This suggests that people with AD can retain personal memories of important public events over long intervals (see Thompson et al., 2004 , for a similar conclusion).

Surprisingly, FBMs for events that have occurred prior to the onset of disease have yet to be examined in AD. In other words, no studies have examined retrograde amnesia for FBM events in dementia. This is surprising, since studying FBMs encoded before the onset of brain pathology may provide important insights into how AD impacts the retrieval of highly emotional events by excluding possible contamination from deficient encoding. The present study aimed to address this gap in the literature by investigating how AD affects retrograde memory for the reception context of important public events across the life span. Moreover, by examining FBMs for public events that occurred across the participants’ life span, the present study can help to clarify whether memories for remote events may show a relative sparing in AD.

In healthy older individuals, emotional events are typically remembered better and are less likely to be forgotten than more mundane events (e.g., Comblain et al., 2005 ; St. Jacques & Levine, 2007 ), and some studies suggest that FBMs may be unaffected by the age-related decline usually reported in episodic memory (e.g., Davidson et al., 2006 ; Davidson & Glisky, 2002 ; however, see Tekcan & Peynircioglu, 2002 , for a different results). Research shows that emotional enhancement of memory is modulated by amygdala recruitment both at encoding (e.g., Adolphs et al., 1997 ; Cahill et al., 1996 ; Canli et al., 2000 ) and retrieval (Dolcos et al., 2017 ). When it comes to retrieval, neuroimaging studies have linked amygdala activation to increased emotional intensity, recall of contextual details, and sense of reexperiencing the event (Botzung et al., 2010 ; Sharot et al., 2004 ; Smith et al., 2005 ; Buchanan, 2007 ), and individuals with amygdala damage show impaired recall for emotional events including FBMs (e.g., Buchanan et al., 2006 ; Spanhel et al., 2018 ).

In contrast, little is known about retrograde memory for emotional autobiographical events in AD, despite amygdala atrophy being pronounced from the early stages of the disease (e.g., Basso et al., 2006 ; Horinek et al., 2007 ; Poulin et al., 2011 ). To our knowledge, only one study has examined autobiographical memories of emotional events in AD. Philippi et al. ( 2015 ) found that while AD participants recalled fewer emotional memories than controls, memory specificity did not differ between groups, indicating that emotions at the time of the event may increase subsequent recall of details in AD. However, the distinction between neutral and emotional memories was based on participants’ retrospective evaluation of their reaction at the time of the event and thus may have been affected by deficient recall.

Moreover, these findings may not generalize to FBM, as FBMs differ from other emotional memories in important ways. In contrast to emotional memories of personal events, the prototypical FBM involves public events, which means that social and cultural factors, including rehearsal and commemoration processes, may influence the formation and maintenance of FBMs differently than private memories (e.g., Berntsen, 2009 ; Hirst & Meksin, 2018 ; Wang & Aydin, 2018 ). For instance, Rasmussen and Berntsen ( 2009 ) conducted a comparison of five types of autobiographical memories (i.e., most positive memory, most negative memory, most frequent involuntary memory, most vivid FBM, and a control memory from the previous week). FBMs were more often shared with other people compared with other types of autobiographical memories, and they were rated significantly higher on social function. This finding aligns with arguments about the collective nature of FBMs and their importance to social identity (e.g., Neisser, 1982 ; Berntsen, 2009 ; Hirst & Phelps, 2016 ; Luminet & Curci, 2009 ). These claims are further supported by evidence that the likelihood for developing FBMs for public events are influenced by social group membership (e.g., gender, religion, nationality) (Talarico et al., 2019 ; see Berntsen, 2018 for a review). For example, Berntsen and Thomsen ( 2005 ) examined FBMs in relation to the occupation and liberation of Denmark during World War II and found that ties to the Danish resistance movement affected both the accuracy and clarity of memories, and Curci et al. ( 2001 ) observed more FBMs related to the death of President Mitterrand among French compared with Belgian citizens. Importantly, several studies have highlighted the importance of rehearsal for the long-term maintenance of FBMs (e.g., Berntsen & Thomsen, 2005 ; Bohn & Berntsen, 2007 ; Talarico & Rubin, 2003 ), with rehearsal also being linked to better memory preservation in AD (Müller et al., 2016 ). While most work has focused on highly surprising negative events, FBMs can also be formed for positive and/or expected events (e.g., Berntsen & Thomsen, 2005 ; Bohn & Berntsen, 2007 ; Curci & Luminet, 2009 ; Kraha & Boals, 2014 ; Tekcan, 2001 ). One goal of the present study was to examine both the frequency with which people with AD retain FBMs of public events and the qualitative aspects of FBMs including the level of detail and the phenomenological experience.

Studying FBMs in AD can also help to clarify the temporal extension of retrograde memory deficits in this population. Some studies have found that impairments follow a temporal gradient (Ribot, 1881 ), with memories for more remote events being better preserved than recent once, while others have reported flat ungraded impairments, or only a gradient for episodic memory or personal semantics (see Kirk & Berntsen, 2018 ; Kopelman & Bright, 2012 , for reviews). A similar disagreement exists for public event knowledge (Kopelman, 1989 ; Leplow et al., 1997 ; Wilson et al., 1981 ; see Meeter et al., 2007 , for a review). The presence of a temporal gradient seems to support the standard consolidation theory (Alvarez & Squire, 1994 ; Squire & Alvarez, 1995 ), which stipulates that the hippocampus plays a time-limited role in the storage of memories, where upon their retrieval become independent of the MTL. In contrast, ungraded episodic memory impairments across the life span are consistent with multiple trace theory (Gilboa & Moscovitch, 2021 ; Moscovitch & Gilboa, 2021 ; Nadel & Moscovitch, 1997 ), which argues that perceptually rich specific memories continue to depend on MTL structures. Here, the better preservation of remote memories sometimes reported have been explained by a process of semantization.

More recently, a different explanation has been offered to account for the finding that people with AD seem to show a relative preservation of memories from young adulthood, proposing that these findings may reflect the presences of a reminiscence bump (e.g., Berntsen et al., 2022 ; Kirk & Berntsen, 2018 ; Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2023 ; see Kopelman, 2019 , for a review). Together with childhood amnesia (a scarcity of memories from the earliest years of life), the reminiscence bump represents one of the most robust findings in autobiographical memory and refers to the phenomenon that people recall a disproportionately high number of memories that occurred between the ages of 10 and 30 (Fitzgerald, 1988 ; Rubin & Schulkind, 1997 ; for a review, see Koppel & Berntsen, 2015 ; Munawar et al., 2018 ). The bump has also been demonstrated for important public events (e.g., Janssen et al., 2008 ; Rubin et al., 1998 ). In a now classic study, Schuman and Scott ( 1989 ) found generational effects in collective memories of important public events, showing that people were more likely to report events that took place during their teens or early 20s. However, findings are mixed with some public events demonstrating a bump, while others deviate from this temporal pattern (for reviews, see Koppel, 2013 ; Tekcan et al., 2017 ), likely reflecting an interaction with the historical significance of the event.

There is also some evidence to suggest that FBMs show a reminiscence bump. For example, Tekcan and Peynircioglu ( 2002 ) examined FBMs for two remote historical events in a group of elderly Turks and found that the formation of FBMs was associated with age at the time of the event. People who were in the bump period at the time of the events were more likely to form FBMs than people who were younger at the time (6 to 10 years), likely due to the importance of the event not being fully appreciated by the younger age group. Denver et al. ( 2010 ) reported that when older adults were free to recall FBMs from their lives, they produced a clear reminiscence bump, and that FBMs from the bump period were more detailed than FBMs of a more recent event (September 11). Accordingly, a second goal of this study was to explore the temporal distribution of FBMs in AD.

The present study

The present study aimed to explore retrograde memory for the reception context of important public events across the life span in a sample of individuals diagnosed with AD and matched healthy controls (HCs). More specifically, our investigation centered on three aspects that will be outlined below: (1) the frequency with which individuals with AD retain FBMs of public events; (2) the quality of FBMs including their level of detail and degree of reliving; and (3) the temporal distribution, including whether a temporal gradient and/or a reminiscence bump can be observed for FBMs in AD. To address these questions, we examined narratives of how participants first learned about a series of public events spanning from the 1930s to the 2010s. We were not interested in accessing memory accuracy, but rather the long-term retention and characteristics of FBMs.

The first question concerned the frequency of FBMs in people with AD and HCs. Here, we aimed to examine the overall frequency of FBMs based on the probed events, as well as the frequency of FBMs for each individual event. To date, studies examining FBMs in AD have focused on memory for a single event (e.g., September 11 attacks). This strategy is complicated by the fact that some public events for various reasons are more likely to lead to the formation and maintenance of FBMs (Luminet & Curci, 2009 ; Rice et al., 2018 ). To overcome this problem in the present study, we probed for FBMs for two historical events from each decade of participants’ lives, including both positive and negative events. We hypothesized that AD participants would report fewer FBMs compared with HCs. However, we also expected some events to be more likely to result in the formation of FBMs, with the two groups showing a similar pattern across events.

The second question involved the effect of AD on the phenomenological qualities of FBMs. Here, we focused on two defining aspects of FBM—namely, contextual details and the subjective sense of reliving. Different conceptualizations of FBMs have been used to examine anterograde memory performance for the reception context in AD, mirroring the general FBM literature (Kizilöz & Tekcan, 2013 ). In the present study, we examined FBMs based on Brown and Kulik’s ( 1977 ) six canonical categories (place, ongoing activity, source, own affect, affect in others, and aftermath), as well as four additional categories (time, others present, activity before, other details) identified in the FBM literature (e.g., Kizilöz & Tekcan, 2013 ; Thomsen & Berntsen, 2003 ), and we assessed the subjective sense of reexperiencing the event. Two predictions could be made based on the literature. On the one hand, we expected that AD participants would exhibit compromised retrieval of contextual details and reduced sense of reliving, in line with observations from studies using standard episodic memory measures in this population (e.g., Irish et al., 2011 ; Piolino et al., 2003 ). Alternatively, we expected the AD group to demonstrate preserved recall of contextual detail, due to the residual enhancement effect of emotion on the phenomenological aspects of memory (Philippi et al., 2015 ), as well as potential effects of private and collective rehearsal. This might also encompass enhanced sense of reexperience.

The third question concerned the temporal distribution of FBMs in AD. Because we systematically probed for two FBMs from each decade participants had lived through, we were able to provide unique data regarding the pattern of retrievals across the life span and observe a reminiscence bump, as well as a period of childhood amnesia, if such were present in the data. Studies on the reminiscence bump in AD for autobiographical memories in general (e.g., Berntsen et al., 2022 ; Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2023 ) would suggest a predominance of memories from childhood and young adulthood, followed by a steep decline of memories after the age of 30. Here, we sought to investigate if this also applied to the retrieval of FBMs.

Participants

Of the 89 AD and HC participants who completed the flashbulb questionnaire, the final sample included 57 participants: 28 AD participants (14 female, 14 male) and 29 HC participants (14 female, 15 male); see Fig. 1 for an overview. Our sample size was determined based on previous research that compared autobiographical recall across the life span in AD (e.g., Berntsen et al., 2022 ; Philippi et al., 2015 ; Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2023 ) and a power analysis using G*Power (Version 3.1.9.2; Faul et al., 2007 ), with the following parameters: alpha = 0.05, power = 0.80, and effect size d = 0.80. All AD participants had received a diagnosis of “probably AD” at a hospital-based memory clinic in Denmark, based on general medical, neurological, and neuropsychological examination and according to the international guidelines by the National Institute on Aging and Alzheimer’s Association clinical criteria (McKhann et al., 2011 ). The HC participants were matched for age, gender, and education (see Table 1 ). Participants had no history of prior neurological problems, psychiatric disorders, or alcohol abuse. HC participants were also excluded from the final analyzes if they obtained a score <88 on the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE; Mathuranath et al., 2000 ), as this indicates cognitive impairment. Both groups of participants demonstrated normal or corrected vision and hearing and were all Danish nationals. AD participants were recruited from municipality activity centers and local residential homes in Aarhus and Horsens, Denmark. HC participants were recruited from local senior’s organizations, and from the research center’s participant database. The study was approved by the Central Denmark Region Committees on Health Research Ethics, and all participants provided informed consent prior to participating in the study.

Flowchart showing attrition of participants

Neuropsychological assessment

Participants were assessed for global cognitive functioning with the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE; Mathuranath et al., 2000 ), which includes the MMSE (Folstein et al., 1975 ). Higher scores on both measures indicate better cognitive ability. Participants were also assessed on phonemic fluency (letter S ) and semantic fluency (animal category; Lezak et al., 2012 ) as part of the ACE. Presence of depressive symptoms were assessed with the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS; Brink et al., 1982 ; Djernes et al., 2004 ), which is a self-report scale consisting of 15 items that can be answered with a yes or no in reference to how the respondent felt over the past week. Higher scores representing more depressive symptoms, with scores ≥6 being shown to be indicative of depression in a Danish validation study with frail elderly participants (Djernes et al., 2004 ).

The flashbulb memory questionnaire

The questions included in the questionnaire were based on earlier work (e.g., Brown & Kulik, 1977 ; Berntsen & Thomsen, 2005 ). A total of 18 events were included in the FBM questionnaire (see Table 2 and the Appendix ). All events were covered by national media when they took place and were sufficiently surprising and consequential to be probable FBM events. The events were carefully selected in collaboration with two experts—a historian specialized in Danish 20th-century history and a social anthropologist and museum curator with extensive knowledge of Danish everyday life during the same historical period. For each decade, two events were included to increase the likelihood that participants were highly familiar with at least one of the two events. Moreover, this number of events was deemed adequate for generating a sufficient number of answers without fatiguing, especially the AD participants. The questionnaire was accommodated to each participant so that the events shown spanned from the first decade of their lives until the present (e.g., if a participant was born in 1939, the first events shown would be from the 1940s spanning to the 2010s). As such, a participant born in 1939 would be probed with a total of 16 events.

The procedure adopted in the present study was an elaboration of Brown and Kulik’s ( 1977 ) original work (see also Berntsen & Thomsen, 2005 ). For each event probed, participants were presented with two to four photographs Footnote 1 of the event on a 21.0 × 29.7-cm white card, while the interviewer named aloud the event. Participants were then asked to provide a memory that referred to the specific event following the instruction: “Do you recall where you were and what you were doing when you first learned that [the named event].” If participants answered yes, they were asked to describe in detail their personal memory of receiving the news. The participants, depending on their age and thus in which decade they were born, would be presented with a total of 14–18 events.

Given the study population, the questioning approach and timing had to be tailored to accommodate the needs and abilities of the participants. For that reason, the time frame was somewhat flexible in order to provide each participant with enough time to consider the request for a personal memory related to a particular event. However, if participants continued to provide only historical information about the named event or diverged from the topic, the interviewer would probe for a personal memory of receiving the news of the event. If it emerged that the participant was unable to recall a personal memory or did not contribute new information, the interviewer was instructed to gently stop the participant and proceed to the next event on the questionnaire. This was done to avoid exhausting participants.

The presentation of the events was counterbalanced so that half of the participants started with events from the 2010s going backwards to the decade the participant was born, whereas the other half were presented with the events in reverse order. If not automatically provided by the participants, the interviewer probed for additional details, such as how they first learned about the event, and what they were doing immediately before the event (see Table 3 ).

When participants indicated the presence of a FBM, whey were furthermore asked to rate the degree to which they felt as though they were reexperiencing the event on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all to 5 = a high degree ). Answers generated in response to the FBM questionnaire were audio recorded to allow for subsequent transcription and coding of events.

Procedure and scoring

All participants were tested individually in their own home by trained psychological staff. After obtaining informed consent, participants were assessed on the neuropsychological and clinical measures (MMSE, ACE, and GDS). Then the Galton–Crovitz word-cuing task was administered, Footnote 2 followed by the FBM questionnaire. For most participants, all tasks were completed in one session; however, in a few instances, the experimenter administered the FBM task to the AD participants in a second session, due to participant exhaustion.

Participants’ verbatim responses to the FBM questionnaire were scored for presence of FBMs by two independent coders. The coders assessed (a) whether the participants themselves indicated that they had a FBM ( yes or no ; i.e., confirmed that they could remember where they were and what they were doing when receiving the news of the event) and (b) whether their description of the event included concrete information to substantiate the “where” and “what” ( yes or no ). In some instances, responses were scored as a FBM based on the details provided in the memory description, rather than on participants explicitly indicating that they had a FBM of the event. The two coders scored 20% of the transcripts independently. Their agreement rates were 88% for presence of FBM and 87% for presence of concrete information. Differences were resolved through discussion. One coder scored the remaining transcripts.

In order to examine the content of the reported memories, all event descriptions were also assessed for information on the following categories: (1) time (when the participant heard the news such as time of day, month), (2) place (where the participant was located when hearing the news), (3) Informant (source) (from who or what the participant heard the news), (4) ongoing activity (what the participant was doing when receiving the news), (5) activity before (the activity that the participant was engaged in immediately before the ongoing activity at the time of the news), (6) own affect (own emotional or physical reactions to hearing the news), (7) others present (other persons present when one received the news), (8) affect in others (how others felt or reacted when hearing the news), (9) aftermath (the immediate aftermath following the news of the event, including any consequences for the person), and (10) other details (any other distinctive details from the event). Six of the categories (2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 9) were based on Brown and Kulik’s ( 1977 ) canonical categories found to be typical for FBMs. Four additional categories were added: time , others present , and activity before , which have previously been identified in the FBM literature (e.g., Berntsen & Thomsen, 2005 ; Kizilöz & Tekcan, 2013 ), while the category other details was included to allow for assessment of idiosyncratic details, such as descriptions of the weather, perceptual information, and thoughts. Each category was dichotomously scored as either present (scored as 1) or not present (scored as 0). The categories were summed for a total score ranging from 0 to 10 for each memory, reflecting the degree of detail and elaboration on each event. Interrater agreement based upon 20% of the transcripts ranged between 80–95% for information category, and the reliability coefficient was 0.92 for the composite score, as estimated by the intraclass correlation coefficient using a two-way random effects model (Shrout & Fleiss, 1979 ).

Data analysis

Statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS statistics (Version 28) for Windows. Group differences were tested using Welch’s t test to account for unequal variance (Delacre et al., 2017 ), rounding the degrees of freedom to the nearest whole number. Pearson’s chi-squared tests were used to examine frequency patterns of memories across the AD and HC groups. Spearman’s correlations were conducted to explore associations between performance measures. We report Cohen’s d effect sizes to indicate the relative strength of significant group differences.

We first report results from the neuropsychological assessment. We next examine group differences regarding the frequency of FBMs and their phenomenological qualities. We then present findings on FBMs for the two groups as a function of age at the time of the event.

Neuropsychological measures

As shown in Table 1 , the AD group scored significantly lower on measures of cognitive functioning (MMSE and ACE) relative to the HC group. The AD participants were also impaired on executive functioning, as demonstrated by the phonemic and semantic fluency scores. There was also a trend towards a higher level of depressive symptoms in the AD group. However, the mean score of the AD participants ( M = 2.42, SD = 2.34) was below the cutoff of the Geriatric Depression Scale (≥6).

Frequency of flashbulb memories in response to probed events

Memory frequency for the circumstances around receiving the news of the probed events was assessed between groups. However, as the number of probed events differed across participants depending on their age (i.e., how many decades they had lived through), we calculated the percentage of events involving FBMs out of the total number of probed events for each participant.

As expected, the HC group reported recalling the circumstances around receiving the news for a significantly higher percentage of events (36.40%) relative to the AD group (16.11%), t (51) = −4.57, p < .001, d = −1.20. For percentage of FBMs that included concrete information on “where” and “what” out of the total number of probed events, a similar pattern emerged, with the HC’s providing concrete details on where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news for 36.40% of the events, relative to 16.71% of the events in the AD group, t (51) = −4.45, p < .001, d = −1.17. For the AD group, the slightly higher percentage of FBMs in the latter condition, reflected that 69 FBMs were identified from participants themselves indicating that they had a FBM and 73 FBMs were identified based on assessing whether descriptions contained concrete information about “where” and “what.” Only in one instance, were an AD participant not able to provide information about “where” and “what” after reporting having a FBM for the event. The clear correspondence between when participants themselves indicated that they had a FBM and their description containing concrete information to substantiate the “where” and “what” observed for both groups (98.6% and 100% in the AD and HC group, respectively), suggest that AD participants retained the ability to determine if they had a FBM for the probed events.

Table 4 shows the raw frequencies and percentages of participants reporting FBMs for the probed events. Although the percentage of participants reporting FBMs were lower in the AD group for most events, chi-squared tests revealed significant group differences in memory frequency only for five of the 18 events included in the FBM questionnaire.

The formation of FBMs is known to depend on the age of the participant at the time of the event. Previous studies have shown that the ability to form FBMs increases as a function of age up to the age of 8 years at the time of the event (Berntsen & Rubin, 2006 ; Winograd & Killinger, 1983 ), consistent with the literature on childhood amnesia. We therefore examined whether the frequency of FBMs increased as a function of age at the time of events up to age 8. Correlational analyses using Spearman’s rho revealed a positive correlation between having a memory and age at event, r (27) = .41, p = .034 in the HC group. This finding is consistent with an age-related increase in the ability to form FBMs during early childhood. In contrast, for the AD group, no significant correlation was found, r (28) = .10, p = .600.

Among HCs who were 8 years or older at the time of the Danish occupation ( n = 4) and Denmark’s Liberation Day ( n = 9), all reported a FBM for these two events, in agreement with previous work (Berntsen & Rubin, 2006 ; Berntsen & Thomsen, 2005 ). For the AD participants, who were a least 8 years old at the time of the events, 83.3% had a FBM of the Danish occupation (out of n = 6 participants) and 61.5% of Denmark’s Liberation (out of n = 13 participants).

Group differences in category sum score

To examine whether memory of the reception context was preserved in AD, we compared the mean category sum score, reflecting the degree of detail and elaboration, across groups (including only self-reported FBMs). A significant difference was observed between the HCs ( M = 5.73, SD = 1.24) and the AD participants ( M = 4.52, SD = 1.38), t (48) = −3.35, p = .002, d = −.93. Hence, even for reported FBMs, AD participants’ performance was impaired compared with that of the HCs.

Recall of information categories for flashbulb memories

To examine whether AD participants and HCs differed in the specific details recalled, we compared the mean percentages of each information category for remembered events across the two groups (see Table 5 ). Regarding Brown and Kulik’s ( 1977 ) original canonical categories, no significant differences were detected for place, source , ongoing activity , own affect , affect in others , or aftermath , suggesting that although AD participants’ memories were less detailed overall, the core features of their FBMs remained relatively preserved. For the four other categories, AD participants produced fewer events that included information about the time and activity before hearing about the event, while no significant differences were seen for others present or other details (see Table 5 ).

Ratings of reexperience

No significant difference was seen for mean ratings of degree of reexperience of the remembered events for AD participants ( M = 3.45, SD = 1.36) and HCs ( M = 3.89, SD = 0.82), t (23) = −1.23, p = .231, d = −.43.

To examine whether degree of memory detail would result in higher reexperience, bivariate correlations were carried out in each group (under the assumption that these measures can be treated as independent observations). Spearman’s rho correlations revealed significant correlations between degree of detail (category sum score) and self-rated reexperience for both the AD participants, r (42) = .31, p =.046, and the HCs, r (148) = .54, p < .001.

Characteristics of FBMs for high-profile events

Some events were much more likely to be associated with FBMs than were others, with the five most frequently remembered events being the same across the two groups (see Table 4 ). These were the Danish occupation , Denmark’s Liberation Day , the Assassination of JFK , Winning the European Championship , and the September 11 attacks , showing that some public events were more likely to create FBMs.

We compared the phenomenological qualities of FBM for these high-profile events across the two groups. Here, significant differences in the category sum score were found for the Danish occupation, Denmark’s Liberation Day, and the September 11 attacks with AD participants providing fewer details. However, for the two other events, no significant differences were detected, and no significant differences were found for degree of reexperience between the two groups for any of the high-profile events (see Table 6 ). This suggests that deficits in the phenomenological aspects of FBMs varied depending on the concrete event being examined.

Effects of lifetime period on flashbulb memories

To examine the temporal distribution of FBMs across the life span, all events were pooled across participants in each group. The AD group provided 69 memories out of the 438 that were possible if all AD participants had reported a memory in response to every event probe, whereas the HCs provided 161 memories out of 444 possible reports. Figure 2 shows the frequencies across seven lifetime periods: 0–5 years of age, 6–11 years of age, 12–19 years of age, 20–30 years of age, 31–45 years of age, 46–60 years of age, and 61 years of age and up, which are roughly consistent with the time bins used in prior work examining the temporal distribution of autobiographical memories (e.g., Barnabe et al., 2012 ; Kirk & Berntsen, 2018 ).

Percentage of flashbulb memories across the five life-time periods for the AD and HC group

As illustrated by Fig. 2 , FBMs were clearly not evenly distributed across the seven lifetime periods in the AD group, χ 2 (6) = 31.52, p < .001, with participants showing a dominance of FBMs from age 6 to 19 followed by a steep drop. In contrast, no significant effect of life period on recall of FBMs was observed for HCs, χ 2 (6) = 10.23, p = .115, although the distribution did indicate a peak for the 6-11 years of age time bin (see Fig. 2 ).

There were no significant group differences in the frequency of reported FBMs from 0 to 19 years of age, indicating that FBMs from these periods were relatively preserved in AD ( p s > .266). In contrast, significant group differences were found for the four most recent time bins, with the AD group performing significantly worse relative to HCs ( p s < .01; see Table 7 ).

However, as certain events were more likely than others to generate FBMs (i.e., high-profile events), we also plotted the FBMs chronologically by the decade of their occurrence. As illustrated in Fig. 3 , the distribution was characterized by three spikes in FBMs: the 1940s corresponding to both of the WWII events (the Danish occupation in 1940 and Liberation Day in 1945), which were highly distinctive for both groups, in line with these events being particular accessible; the 1960s corresponding to the assassination of JFK; and the 1990s and 2000s corresponding to Denmark Winning the European Football Championship and the September 11 terrorist attacks, which were more pronounced in the HC group. This indicates that retrieval was, at least in part, driven by the memorability of the specific public events, rather than only by participants age at the time of the event.

Distribution (in percentages) of flashbulb memories across decades. Note. The peak in the 1940s reflects the two WWII events (the Danish occupation in 1940 and Liberation Day in 1945); the peak in 1960s reflects the assassination of JFK in 1963; and the peak across the 1990s and 2000s reflects Denmark Winning the European Championship in 1992 and the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001

The aim of the present study was to examine memory for the reception of important public events across the life span in individuals with AD, compared with healthy older adult. The results of our study demonstrated that FBM was impaired in AD, with this group reporting significantly fewer FBMs and providing less contextual detail overall compared with HCs. However, similarities were also observed across the two groups. First, AD participants and HCs showed a similar pattern of performance, the most frequently remembered events being the same across groups. Second, despite AD participants reporting fewer details overall, no significant group differences were found for most content categories, suggesting that people with AD do retain some memory of the reception context for important public events. Importantly, our results showed that FBM performance in AD varied depending on the specific lifetime period and specific event being assessed.

Frequency of flashbulb memories

In line with previous work concerning autobiographical memory for emotional events (Philippi et al., 2015 ), AD participants demonstrated a quantitative deficit, recalling fewer FBMs overall. However, this effect varied depending on the specific events and lifetime period being probed, with no differences being observed for FBMs dated to the period between 0 and 19 years of age (see Fig. 2 ). A similar pattern, with no deficits in memory frequency for the early years (0–15 years of age), was also reported in a study on life story memories in AD (Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2023 ), and accords with general observations that AD involves a relative sparing of memories for the remote past (e.g., Barnabe et al., 2012 ; Graham & Hodges, 1997 ; Greene et al., 1995 ; Kirk & Berntsen, 2018 ). Our study expands these findings on retrograde amnesia in AD by showing that the relative sparing of early memories also applies to FBMs.

AD participants showed a predominance of FBMs from the 6–19-year period followed by a steep drop. This pattern has some overlap with the temporal distribution observed in previous studies (e.g., Berntsen et al., 2022 ; Fromholt & Larsen, 1991 ; Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2023 ) and may be indicative of an early reminiscence bump (Rubin et al., 1998 ; Rubin & Schulkind, 1997 ). It is also consistent with findings from the collective memory literature showing some evidence that memory for important public events is most pronounced for events occurring during ones youth (Schuman & Scott, 1989 ; but see Koppel, 2013 ; Koppel & Berntsen, 2016 , for more mixed results). No effect of lifetime period was found on FBM frequency in the HCs, except for an increase in FBMs up to the age of 8, consistent with a period of childhood amnesia. However, HCs did show a trend towards a bump for the 6 to 11 years of age time bin (see Fig. 2 ), suggesting that events from this period were more frequently recalled, in line with prior findings of a reminiscence bump in FBMs in healthy aging (e.g., Denver et al., 2010 ). Interestingly, a similar pattern, characterized by a bump in the AD group and the absence of such a bump in HCs, was also reported in a recent study that explored autobiographical recall across seven lifetime periods (Berntsen et al., 2022 ). This suggests that the cueing technique of probing events from specific lifetime periods, as opposed to freely across the life span, may partially account for our findings. Furthermore, factors related to collective remembering, such as perceived historical relevance, are likely to have also formed memories at the individual level.

Overall, these findings do not support a flat gradient, as predicted by the multiple trace theory, or a clear temporal gradient with a monotonic decrease, consistent with consolidation theory. The sparring of FBMs from childhood and adolescence followed by a marked decline in frequency may be accounted for by a reminiscence bump in AD; however, it may also be that event specific characteristics made FBMs from this period more accessible. Specifically, the World War II events from the 1940s were particularly accessible to both groups. These events serve an important role for Danish national identity and have been much commemorated and publicly rehearsed over the years, which may have influenced memory consolidation and maintenance processes (Berntsen, 2009 ).

Phenomenological qualities of flashbulb memories

The results concerning memory for contextual details were less clear. Only 2 out of 10 categories revealed a statistically significant group difference (details on time and activity before) with no differences being found for any of Brown and Kulik’s ( 1977 ) canonical categories. That is, for the FBMs AD participants did produce, they were able to provide information about the content (e.g., where they were, how they first became aware of the event, what they were doing, how they felt or reacted, how others reacted and the immediate aftermath following the event), at a level comparable with HCs. These findings suggest that while their FBMs were less detailed overall (based on the category sum score), the core characteristics of FBMs were retained in AD. This contrasts with the compromised retrograde memory for contextual details normally reported in individuals with AD (e.g., Greene et al., 1995 ; Ivanoiu et al., 2006 ; Leyhe et al., 2009 ) and suggests that FBMs have a positive effect on retrieval in the case of AD, in line with findings from studies focusing on anterograde memory in AD (e.g., Çebi et al., 2020 ; El Haj et al., 2016 ; Ikeda et al., 1998 ). These results may reflect some residual emotional enhancement effect in AD (e.g., Philippi et al., 2015 ). However, other processes such as enhanced rehearsal likely also contribute (e.g., Müller et al., 2016 ). This is consistent with evidence that frequently rehearsed memories for public events are better preserved in AD, regardless of the remoteness of these events (Langlois et al., 2016 ).

Interestingly, AD participants’ ability to report FBMs varied depending on the specific event being probed, with no significant group differences being detected on level of detail (the category sum score) for two of the five high-profile events (i.e., the assassination of JFK and Denmark winning the European Championship). This is important because most studies have assessed FBM in AD, focusing on a single event taking place after dementia onset. The present finding suggests that differences in memorability of the public events may help account for some of the divergent results regarding FBMs previously reported in AD.

Also, in contrast to general findings of compromised episodic reliving in AD (see El Haj et al., 2015 , for a review), no group differences were found for degree of reexperiencing the retrieved FBMs. This finding fits with the results of a case study on anterograde FBM in an individual with mild AD, who reported a high degree of mental time travel and mental imagery for the Paris attacks in 2015 (El Haj et al., 2016 ). Here, we showed that this finding extends to retrograde retrieval of FBMs, and that this sustained subjective reliving is consistent across time and events. The validity of these findings was further supported by degree of reliving being positively correlated with number of contextual details both in HCs and AD participants.

Limitations

The present study has limitations. First, because this study examined memories related to real-life public events that happened at specific times in history and necessarily varied regarding perceived importance both nationally and internationally, it was not possible to fully match events on characteristics such as consequentiality, nationality, salience, or emotional valence. Still, all included events received extensive media coverage after they took place and are the kind of consequential and surprising events that FBMs typically are made of, according to independent historical assessments. Second, a unique strength of the present study was the systematic examination of FBMs across the life span of the participants, and the inclusion of both older adults with AD and older healthy adults, none of which has been done before. Yet, because the participants did not have the same exact age at the time of testing, and because of the memory deficits in the AD group, the sample of events that each participant could meaningfully respond to necessarily varied between participants. Third, the design of the study did not include a comparison or control memory, such as a non-FBM from each decade, because it is unclear exactly what such condition should be and because such inclusion would have rendered the study considerably more time consuming and involved a real risk of exhausting the AD participants. However, the fact that the temporal distribution of the FBMs mimics that of earlier work examining important personal events (e.g., Berntsen et al., 2022 ; Fromholt & Larsen, 1991 ; Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2023 ) supports the validity of a reminiscence bump in AD. Moreover, prior studies examining important personal events have also reported that declining memory frequency was not accompanied by less detailed or specific events in AD (e.g., Fromholt & Larsen, 1991 ; Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2023 ), suggesting that perceived importance or emotionality is associated with enhanced memory in AD. Fourth, given the central role of rehearsal in FBM formation and maintenance, further studies could consider to include measures assessing rehearsal, including examining the impact of commemorations on FBM retrieval in AD, although it may be difficult to meaningfully obtain such retrospective assessments given the memory deficits in the population. Fifth, the small number of FBMs collected from some time periods means that any null findings regarding lifetime periods or events should be interpreted with caution. Finally, we do not know when AD participants’ memory impairments began, which means that FBMs related to some of the later public events may have been influenced by anterograde amnesia rather than only reflecting deficits in retrograde recall.

Overall, AD participants were able to report FBMs, but the frequency of reported FBMs was lower than for HCs. Importantly, despite such quantitative differences, our findings suggest that qualitative aspects of AD participants’ FBMs were quite similar to those of healthy older adults, as no significant group differences were obtained with respect to the canonical categories or the subjective degree of reexperience for memories reported. This suggests that people with AD can retain quite detailed episodic memories over long temporal delays, when cued by requests for FBMs. AD participants’ FBMs clustered during the early years of their life, whereas HCs also reported FBMs dated to later lifetime periods. The findings suggest that probing for personal memories of important public events may serve as a powerful cue for detailed episodic memories in AD, which may help maintain a sense of personal and social identity.

Photographs were chosen from Google.

Data from the Galton-Crovitz word-cuing task will be reported elsewhere.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Velux Foundation [Grant No. 13481] and the Danish National Research Foundation [Grant No. DNRF89]. We thank Marianna Daustrand for her assistance during earlier parts of this project.

Open access funding provided by Aarhus Universitet. Velux Fonden,Grant Number 13481,Danmarks Grundforskningsfond,Grant Number DNRF89

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Katrine W. Rasmussen, Marie Kirk, Susanne B. Overgaard & Dorthe Berntsen

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Appendix. Description of the events probed in the FBM questionnaire

Kanslergadeforliget, Denmark, January 30, 1933: An important political agreement in Denmark that shaped economic policies and laid the foundation for the Danish welfare state. It received notable media coverage at the time.

Hindenburg disaster, USA, May 6, 1937: The catastrophic explosion of the German airship Hindenburg. It had substantial international impact, so Danish media also covered it extensively.

The Danish occupation, Denmark, April 9, 1940: Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. This event received extensive media coverage as a pivotal moment in Danish history.

Denmark’s Liberation Day, Denmark, May 5, 1945: Denmark’s liberation from German occupation in World War II. Received significant coverage as a pivotal moment in Danish history.

The sinking of “Hans Hedtofts,” Denmark, January 30, 1959: The sinking of a Danish passenger ship in the North Atlantic, claiming 95 lives. Received extensive coverage in Danish media due to the national tragedy.

The catastrophe on Haderslev Dam, Denmark, July 8, 1959: A tourist boat exploded and burned up, claiming 57 lives. A national tragedy which received notable national coverage.

Assassination of John F. Kennedy, USA, November 22, 1963: The assassination of the U.S. President. Given its global impact, Danish media covered it extensively.

First human to step on the moon (Neil Armstrong), USA, July 21, 1969: A historic milestone in human space exploration. Received widespread global coverage, including in Danish media.

Coronation of Queen Margrethe II, Denmark, January 14, 1972: The coronation of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II. Received substantial coverage due to its national significance.

Referendum on joining the European Economic Community, Denmark, October 2, 1972: Denmark’s referendum on joining the EEC. Received significant attention due to its implications for Denmark’s future.

Assassination of Oluf Palme, Sweden, February 28, 1986: The assassination of Sweden’s Prime Minister. Received notable coverage in neighboring Denmark due to the proximity and significance of the event.

Fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany, November 9, 1989: The collapse of the Berlin Wall symbolizing the end of the Cold War. Received widespread global coverage, including in Danish media.

Denmark wins gold at the European Football Championship, Sweden (Germany versus Denmark), June 17, 1992: A significant sporting achievement for Denmark. Received substantial coverage in Danish media.

Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, France, August 31, 1997: The tragic death of Princess Diana. Received extensive global media coverage, including in Denmark.

September 11 Attacks, World Trade Center, USA, September 11, 2001: Terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. Received widespread global coverage, including Danish media.

Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Asia, December 26, 2004: Catastrophic natural disaster resulting in a devastating tsunami. Received significant international coverage, including in Danish media.

Krudttønden attack and the Great Synagogue Shooting, Denmark, February 14–15, 2015: Terrorist attacks in Copenhagen. Received substantial coverage in Danish media.

Donald Trump is elected president of the USA, November 8, 2016: The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president. Received substantial coverage in Danish media due to its global implications and interest in U.S. politics.

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Rasmussen, K.W., Kirk, M., Overgaard, S.B. et al. The days we never forget: Flashbulb memories across the life span in Alzheimer’s disease. Mem Cogn (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01558-z

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What makes a memory? It may be related to how hard your brain had to work

The human brain filters through a flood of experiences to create specific memories. Why do some of the experiences in this deluge of sensory information become "memorable," while most are discarded by the brain?

A computational model and behavioral study developed by Yale scientists suggests a new clue to this age-old question, they report in the journal Nature Human Behavior .

"The mind prioritizes remembering things that it is not able to explain very well," said Ilker Yildirim, an assistant professor of psychology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and senior author of the paper. "If a scene is predictable, and not surprising, it might be ignored."

For example, a person may be briefly confused by the presence of a fire hydrant in a remote natural environment, making the image difficult to interpret, and therefore more memorable. "Our study explored the question of which visual information is memorable by pairing a computational model of scene complexity with a behavioral study," said Yildirim.

For the study, which was led by Yildirim and John Lafferty, the John C. Malone Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Yale, the researchers developed a computational model that addressed two steps in memory formation -- the compression of visual signals and their reconstruction.

Based on this model, they designed a series of experiments in which people were asked if they remembered specific images from a sequence of natural images shown in rapid succession. The Yale team found that the harder it was for the computational model to reconstruct an image, the more likely the image would be remembered by the participants.

"We used an AI model to try to shed light on perception of scenes by people -- this understanding could help in the development of more efficient memory systems for AI in the future," said Lafferty, who is also the director of the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence at the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale.

Former Yale graduate students Qi Lin (Psychology) and Zifan Lin (Statistics and Data Science) are co-first authors of the paper.

• Intelligence
• Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Child Development
• Hallucination
• Sensory system
• Psycholinguistics
• Neurobiology
• Parkinson's disease

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Materials provided by Yale University . Original written by Bill Hathaway. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Qi Lin, Zifan Li, John Lafferty, Ilker Yildirim. Images with harder-to-reconstruct visual representations leave stronger memory traces . Nature Human Behaviour , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01870-3

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