No abstract

A total of 449 students were tested for their event memories and autobiographical memories of hearing about the Columbia shuttle disaster of 1st February 2003. Four different groups were tested 2, 18, 27, or 51 days after the event. All participants were then re-tested after 5 months (second session) and again after 1 year (third session) from the first interview. Dissociations between consistency and confidence and between event and autobiographical memories were found. Consistency and confidence in event memories, but not in autobiographical memories, were affected by time. In contrast, repeated testing selectively enhanced autobiographical memories, in accordance with the narrative and rehearsal hypothesis of Neisser and Harsh (1992). For event memories, veridicality was inversely correlated to consistency, which in turn was inversely correlated to confidence, and mainly based on omissions. As regards veridicality, the analyses showed an increase of false memories at long time delays. Results are discussed with reference to recent studies contrasting autobiographical and event memories.

No abstract

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

Early-life circumstances and cognitive functioning dynamics in later life ▸ Cognitive decline in later life is partially related to childhood book shortage ▸ Measuring variations over time on cognitive abilities depends upon test contents ▸ Women show larger cohort effects because of differences in educational attainment ▸ Education policies may play a role to explain cognitive decline differences across cohorts