Cambridge University Press (CUP), Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 04(22), p. 315
DOI: 10.1017/s1352465800013199
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In recent years, there has been considerable debate about how accurately people remember emotionally significant information. Early studies concerned with “flashbulb memories” claimed that emotional memories are accurate and persistent. However, recent studies indicate that flashbulb memories are subject to deterioration over time. This finding fits with the idea that individuals who have experienced a traumatic event do not retain all the details of the trauma equally well. Instead, they have relatively good memory for central detail information and relatively poor memory for peripheral details of the traumatic situation. Using self-report data of a normal, healthy sample, Christianson and Loftus (1990) found evidence for this idea. The current study is an attempt to replicate Christianson and Loftus' finding in a normal student population (N = 106). Subjects were asked to describe their most traumatic situation. They rated the vividness of the memory, the intensity of emotion at the time of the trauma and at the time of recall, the amount of reliving, and the amount of central and peripheral detail information remembered. Results indicate that subjects who reported strong emotion at the time of the trauma remembered significantly more central detail information than subjects with relatively low past emotionality ratings. However, no differences in the amount of peripheral detail information remembered were found.