Schooler, J.W., Eich, E. Memory for Emotional Events. Memory in Life, 379-388.
Schooler et al article on memory for emotional events is an excellent article that provides an introduction into the relationship between stress and eyewitness identification. There are many topics that this article discusses including: central vs. peripheral events, lab vs. real life experiments, flashbulb memories, and repressed memories.
Schooler et al bring up the point that in many experiments, they see that witnesses are more likely to accurately identify central event details than peripheral event details. The problem with experiments testing the effects of stress on memory in a lab is that lab conditions cannot completely replicate the exact stress conditions in real life. This causes researcher to believe that lab experiments are not accurate. Although they might not be completely accurate, they are still relative to the situation and have mostly the same outcome. The next topic discussed is flashbulb memories. Flashbulb memories are basically memories that you remember as if someone took a picture and you remember all of the details, often very accurately and vividly. To put in perspective, think about the details surrounding you on 9/11. Most people can say that they know exactly who they were with and where. These memories are often speculated because researchers do not know if those memories were in fact true or just something that was put in your memory by something else (media, family, friends, etc.) The last idea that is brought up comes from the old ideas of Freud stating that traumatic events are often kept out of a person's awareness. Often times this happens is sexual abuse cases. These memories can also be recovered after an event by sometimes using psychoanalysis or hypnosis.
To sum up this article, there are too many complex interactions and multiple variables that a researcher needs to study when finding the correlation between stress and eyewitness identification memory.
Summary by Kelli
Initially many people believed that a stressful event would impair ones memory. But further research has proposed a different view, that stress/arousal may improve memory for central details and impair peripheral memory detail. An example given was weapon focus. An individual who is threatened with a weapon may remember essential details about the gun but may remember much less about the perpetrator or his/her surroundings.
Retention time was also talked about, a short retention time between the stressful event and recall was said to lead to a poor memory performance due to the stress at encoding. However, a long retention time lead to a higher memory performance. On the other hand, these findings have not been consistent with other studies. Overall, a witness’s memory of a particular event can either be more or less accurate depending on how important the event is, the amount of time passed, and the emotional content of the event, etc.
Flashbulb memories were something that I had never heard of before. It was interesting to learn that Brown and Kulik created the term and I from what I understand, a flashbulb memory is a memory made when someone experiences a personally stressful or shocking event. A flashbulb memory is generally very detailed and sometimes referred to having photographic quality. Immediately after reading about what a flashbulb memory is, September 11th 2001 (911) came to my mind. I would say that this event created a flashbulb memory for me because I can still vividly remember where I was, what I was doing, and the cereal I was eating, during the exact time the planes were flying into the towers. The terrorist attack on this day was a nationally upsetting incident and I’m sure that others have their own version of this type of flashbulb memory.
I also found it interesting that a traumatic event can be forgotten, and that a “forgotten memory” can be recovered/discovered. Although some discovered memories may occur because of a therapists suggestions, but they may also be caused by actual experiences.
The articles dealing with stress were interesting. I especially liked the article that dealt with the military personnel because as we have talked about, this study dealt with ecological validity concerns. This study was conducted in a real-life environment, which helps with guard against ecological validity arguments. The other two articles were interesting, as well.
The Schooler and Eich article was a good article because it went over a variety of different memory issues, including flashbulb memories and traumatic memories. When the issue of false memories came up, I was reminded of Elizabeth Loftus’s talk at AP-LS. If I remember correctly, she was talking about issues with false memories. I think she and her colleagues were conducting research with implanting false memories with participants. I remember that some of her studies deal with food and telling some participants that at one point in their childhood, they got sick from a certain food. Ratings afterward indicated that these participants did not rate that particular food as highly as before. I am pretty sure that is what they did, and this article reminded me of those particular studies. I also was reminded of the article that I talked about that dealt with eyewitness memory in the field. They found that stress may not necessarily impair accuracy, which is interesting. Another item from the Schooler article that I found interesting was the discussion about repressed memories. This issue is very charged for some people, plus issues relating to the criminal justice system. Recovered memories can be influenced by the therapist, but they also may not be influenced by the therapist. However, it is hard to handle this issue with regard to the criminal justice system because many people’s lives are impacted. I think further research should be conducted about this issue.
Overall, these articles touched on a variety of issues dealing with stress and eyewitness memory. It is an interesting topic to discuss because many eyewitnesses may be under stress during the crime.
HC