The Pros And Cons Of Flashbulb Memory

Flashbulb and “flashbulb-like” memories are controversial. A person could be confident their memory is correct, yet it could be completely false. For the purpose of this paper, I decided to take one of my own private flashbulb memories, when my grandma died, and analyze what I remember. This special memory may be completely accurate, or may have been rehearsed so many times that certain details have become misrepresented. My flashbulb memory occurred on July 14, 2008, at 3:35am. I had just turned 14 years old nine days earlier. My mom came into my room, obviously upset, and woke me up to tell me that my grandma had passed away five minutes before. She had just gotten off the phone with my grandpa, and he wanted us to come to the hospital and say goodbye before the mortician arrived. I was overwhelmed with grief as I was sitting there on my bed in the dark, with nothing but the light from the hallway shining in. I jumped out of bed, threw on a pair of pants and a Relay for Life t-shirt, and soon was in the vehicle on my way to the hospital, that was a few blocks away, with my parents.

The six canonical categories are place, informant, own affect, affect of others, ongoing event, and aftermath. The place was my bedroom, the informant was my mom, both affects were grief and sadness, the ongoing event was my sitting up in bed and changing emotions, and the aftermath was getting dressed and going to the hospital. These characteristics are indicative of the flashbulb memory because they are all things that were not typical of my daily life. I usually slept through the night, was not woken by a sad mother, was not upset when I woke up, and did not go with my parents to the hospital in the middle of the