Wright D B, Gaskell G D, O'Muircheartaigh C A
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, UK.
Br J Psychol. 1998 Feb;89 ( Pt 1):103-21. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1998.tb02675.x.
Implicit in most flashbulb memory research are three assumptions: that major news events will be important for almost everyone in the chosen sample, that people's ratings of memory quality are reliable and that a detailed recollection of personal circumstances implies a vivid memory. Using two general population surveys of Great Britain (total N = 3160), we examine each of these assumptions for two events that have recently been used in flashbulb memory studies: Margaret Thatcher's resignation as Prime Minister and the Hillsborough football disaster. The results emphasize the importance of careful sampling of both participants and events, and question whether flashbulb memories are as vivid as originally hypothesized. This type of research is rare within the flashbulb memory literature on account of the large sample sizes and the use of samples representative of the general population. This allows us to return to Brown & Kulik's (1977) original emphasis on group differences and re-evaluate their findings.
重大新闻事件对所选样本中的几乎每个人都很重要，人们对记忆质量的评级是可靠的，以及对个人情况的详细回忆意味着生动的记忆。我们利用对英国的两项普通人群调查（总样本量N = 3160），针对最近在闪光灯记忆研究中使用的两个事件检验了这些假设：玛格丽特·撒切尔辞去首相职务和希尔斯堡足球惨案。研究结果强调了对参与者和事件进行仔细抽样的重要性，并对闪光灯记忆是否如最初假设的那样生动提出了质疑。由于样本量较大且使用了代表普通人群的样本，这类研究在闪光灯记忆文献中较为罕见。这使我们能够回归布朗和库利克（1977年）最初对群体差异的关注，并重新评估他们的研究结果。
