{"id":287,"date":"2013-05-02T22:23:17","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T02:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=287"},"modified":"2013-12-11T07:22:30","modified_gmt":"2013-12-11T12:22:30","slug":"where-were-you-on-september-11-2001","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2013\/05\/02\/where-were-you-on-september-11-2001\/","title":{"rendered":"Where were you on September 11, 2001?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By now you\u2019ve probably searched your memory and are replaying the gruesome images you have vividly stored in your mind from that September morning over a decade ago. That day stands out in your memory and most likely will for the rest of your life. I was only nine years old that day, but even I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing that day\u2026 At least I think I can. I had just finished my second class of the day when an all-school assembly was called in the bunker-like cement building that is the German School of Washington, D.C. Faculty and staff were frantically pacing around our auditorium while older students sat holding each other, many weeping out of fear for family members and loved ones that worked a short 15 minute trip away in downtown D.C. Only after an over-head projector was flipped on was I able to understand the severity of the situation, and I clearly remember a feeling of shock and misunderstanding overcoming me. I recently discussed that terrifying day with my mom, who picked me up from school sometime after the North Tower in New York City was struck. After explaining to her what I remembered from that day she said to me, \u201cthat\u2019s funny, I picked you up from school almost immediately after the first attack in New York.\u201d What I recalled was sitting in that auditorium for what felt like an eternity, watching both the North and South Tower get hit, collapsing, and watching all the aftermath unfold from right there with my peers. In reality I was sitting safe and sound on my couch, watching the mayhem on TV back at home. <!--more-->Clearly my memory fooled me, and, in a study conducted on September 12, 2001, Jennifer M. Talarico and David C. Rubin of Duke University examined this phenomenon of misremembering. The experiment focuses on the validity of flashbulb memories, a specific type of memory that is defined by how vivid the recollection of a specific, most frequently traumatic, event is. Talarico and Rubin had Duke University students perform two separate tests the day after the September 11<sup>th<\/sup> attacks. These tests were used as a baseline, off of which Talarico and Rubin would later base the results of their data. The first was a task asked individuals describe everything they remembered from the terrorist attacks of the previous day, while the other task asked individuals describe a regular, habitual event. The same individuals were then divided into three groups and returned either 1, 6, or 32 weeks later to recall the same events. Talarico and Rubin evaluated the consistencies between the two different tasks to establish whether or not recollection for flashbulb memories was more accurate than for the other events. What Talarico and Rubin intended to illustrate through their experiment is the reality that flashbulb memories, although significantly more vivid, are in no way more accurate than memories of plain, every-day events. Personally, this idea seemed ridiculous to me at first read. On many occasions, I can&#8217;t remember what I was doing 24 hours ago, let alone provide any sort of specific detail of the previous day. Because of this, I found it exceedingly difficult to believe that my flashbulb memories might be nothing more than pure deception. Memories of events like 9\/11 are extremely long lasting and emotionally loaded, leading to what Talarico and Rubin describe as perceived accuracy. Perceived accuracy, as Talarico and Rubin describe it, is the idea that we believe an event is more accurate due to its vividness and emotional significance. The ease with which we are able to retrieve these events from our memory convinces us that our recollection of the specific details is much more accurate than for other memories. What Talarico and Rubin found was precisely what I failed to believe before, participants for both the flashbulb memories and the every-day events showed similar levels of forgetting over time. Incorrect recollection increased over time while correct recollection decreased for both types of memories. Talarico and Rubin also found that recollection for specific details dropped dramatically over time, suggesting that individuals remembered the general information of a given event, not the specific details. The last idea, remembering an event rather than the details, makes a lot of sense.\u00a0 September 11th is engrained in our memory as one of the most horrific events in recent history, suggesting that the event is what remains with us so vividly, not so much the exact details of the incident. The study conducted by Talarico and Rubin demonstrates the inaccuracies of flashbulb memories. Due to the vividness of flashbulb memories we convince ourselves that our recollection is more accurate than that of every-day events. One aspect that Talarico and Rubin argue is responsible for this phenomenon is the fact that we rehearse and retrieve flashbulb memories more frequently than normal memories. Ultimately it is important to note that, although we may believe our flashbulb memories to be perfectly accurate, our knowledge of these events deteriorates just as much over time as all our other memories. At the end of the day we have all been deceived by our flashbulb memories, and, even though I am well aware of such a deception now,\u00a0 I will most likely fall for it again some time down the road. For this particular event, whether I was at school or at home in front of the TV, I now and for a long time will have a vivid recollection of September 11th, 2001 . . . which exact details of that memory are correct, I will never know. Jennifer M. Talarico &amp; David C. Rubin (2003). Confidence, Not Consistency, Characterizes Flashbulb Memories<em>. Psychological Science, 14,\u00a0<\/em>455-461.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By now you\u2019ve probably searched your memory and are replaying the gruesome images you have vividly stored in your mind from that September morning over a decade ago. That day stands out in your memory and most likely will for the rest of your life. I was only nine years old that day, but even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80215],"tags":[130380],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":827,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}