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Essay On Flashbulb Memories

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Flashbulb Memories

Memories play an important role in our lives, sometimes remembering a certain event can change our mood completely. There are many factors that can influence the formation of memories and how vividly we are going to recall of certain events. All of us can probably think of an example of an event that happened many years ago but we still remember it as if it happened yesterday. Such memories are called flashbulb memories because of their vividness and the details that can be remembered about them. Keeping that in mind the question that arises is what makes us remember certain events more vividly than others i.e. why do we form flashbulb memories and how reliable are they? The term flashbulb memory was first coined …show more content…

He states that emotion plays a key role in memory formation. As we are experiencing something our emotions will trigger release of hormones, if we are under stress, the hormone that is going to be released is cortisol, often called the stress hormone. If we are happy, dopamine (happiness hormone) will be released etc. The hormones will then signal our brain that something important is happening and a memory will be made accordingly (311). Thus, depending on the intensiveness of emotion and the type of hormone that is released while we are experiencing something, different types of memories will be formed. The experiences that were accompanied by a profound emotion and immense amounts of certain hormone released will become clearer, more detailed memories; flashbulb …show more content…

Discrepancies of such type of memories were even mentioned in the initial study by Brown and Kulik who stated that such memories may be prone to changes over time due to rehearsal. When such a shocking event happens we often talk about it a lot, thus we are constantly recalling of it which makes us remember it better. The first time this theory was questioned was in the research study conducted by Neisser and Harsch in

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