Schmolck H, Buffalo E A, Squire L R
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2000 Jan;11(1):39-45. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.00212.
Fifteen or 32 months after the verdict was announced in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, we asked college students about how they had heard the news, and we compared their responses with what they had told us 3 days after the verdict. Our study is the first to have assessed recollective accuracy at two different intervals more than 1 year after a noted public event. The quality of the recollections after 32 months was strikingly different from the quality of the recollections after 15 months. After 15 months, 50% of the recollections were highly accurate, and only 11% contained major errors or distortions. After 32 months, only 29% of the recollections were highly accurate, and more than 40% contained major distortions. Retention interval appears to be an important factor determining the frequency of memory distortions, and differences in the retention interval across studies may account for some of the contradictions in the flashbulb-memory literature. Metamemory errors and source memory difficulties are a likely basis of poor memory performance after long retention intervals. The results highlight the marked qualitative changes in recollections that can occur between 1 and 3 years after information has been acquired.
在辛普森杀妻案的判决宣布15个月或32个月后，我们询问大学生他们是如何得知这一消息的，并将他们的回答与判决宣布3天后他们告诉我们的内容进行比较。我们的研究是首次在一个著名公共事件发生一年多后的两个不同时间点评估回忆准确性。32个月后的回忆质量与15个月后的回忆质量显著不同。15个月后，50%的回忆高度准确，只有11%包含重大错误或歪曲。32个月后，只有29%的回忆高度准确，超过40%包含重大歪曲。保留间隔似乎是决定记忆歪曲频率的一个重要因素，不同研究中保留间隔的差异可能解释了闪光灯记忆文献中的一些矛盾之处。元记忆错误和源记忆困难可能是长时间保留间隔后记忆表现不佳的一个基础。这些结果凸显了在获取信息1至3年后回忆中可能出现的显著质性变化。
