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Memory for public events was compared across Chinese and U.S. participants to explore competing explanations for cultural differences in flashbulb memories. Participant recall of the canonical features of events was more detailed and more likely to include a specific time in the United States than in the Chinese reports. Vividness was positively correlated with the flashbulb memory scores only in the U.S. sample. In both cultures, emotion, national importance, and thinking about the event predicted vividness and recall of memory details. Chinese participants reported primarily disasters and social events, and their memories were more likely to include international events than U.S. participants. The U.S. participants recalled primarily political events and terrorism. These results suggest that culture has important influences on the quantity, level of detail, completeness, and vividness of autobiographical memories as well as on the types of events triggering flashbulb memories.

College students were asked about their personal memories from September 11, 2001. Consistency in reported features over a 2-month period increased as the delay between the initial test and 9/11 increased. Central features (e.g., Where were you?) were reported with greater consistency than were peripheral features (What were you wearing?) but also contained a larger proportion of reconstructive errors. In addition, highly emotional participants demonstrated poor prospective memory and relatively inconsistent memory for peripheral details, when compared with less emotional participants. Highly emotional participants were also more likely to increase the specificity of their responses over time but did not exhibit greater consistency for central details than did less emotional participants. The results demonstrated reconstructive processes in the memory for a highly consequential and emotional event and emotional impairment of memory processing of incidental details.

A picture of a nude isolated in a series of pictures of clothed models was quite memorable, but when compared with a clothed picture, the nude impaired memory for background picture details as well as pictures immediately following the nude (anterograde amnesia). Recall of details given picture-gist recall, as well as recognition of person details, were equivalent in the clothed and nude conditions. A clothed picture isolated in a series of nudes did not hurt memory for background information, nor did it produce anterograde amnesia. Apparently, distinctiveness supports good memory for the gist of the nude or clothed pictures. However, distinctiveness is not responsible for the anterograde amnesia and poor memory for background details found with nudes.

Memory for humorous and nonhumorous versions of sentences was compared. Humorous sentences were better remembered than the nonhumorous sentences on both free- and cued-recall tests and on measures of sentence recall and word recall. These effects persisted when subjects were warned that they were about to read a humorous sentence but were attenuated in incidental learning and limited to within-subjects manipulations. In incidental learning, recall was also scored as a function of subjective ratings of humor. Subjective humor affected memory in both within- and between-subjects designs. Attention, arousal, rehearsal, retrieval, and surprise explanations were explored. Results suggest that humorous material receives both increased attention and rehearsal relative to nonhumorous material.

Participants recalled low- and high-priority words varying in distinctiveness in three experiments. Word priority was established by assigning point values based on font colour or conceptual category. Word distinctiveness varied across three list structures: homogeneous lists of words (same colour or category), 50/50 lists containing words in two font colours or from two categories, and isolation lists in which a word was isolated in serial position two either by colour (Experiments 1 and 2) or category (Experiment 3). Word priority was established before list presentation in Experiment 1 and after list presentation in Experiments 2 and 3. When colour priority was established before list presentation, participants recalled high-priority words better than low-priority words across all list structures. Early isolation enhanced recall for high-priority words but impaired recall for low-priority words. When colour priority was established after list presentation, neither priority nor distinctiveness enhanced recall. When category priority was established after list presentation, participants recalled high-priority words better than low-priority words, and isolation only enhanced recall when it was combined with high priority. We concluded that priority and distinctiveness combine to produce the early isolation effect, and that encoding and retrieval processes interact to enhance memory for high-priority and distinctive events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Memory for public events was compared across Chinese and U.S. participants to explore competing explanations for cultural differences in flashbulb memories. Participant recall of the canonical features of events was more detailed and more likely to include a specific time in the United States than in the Chinese reports. Vividness was positively correlated with the flashbulb memory scores only in the U.S. sample. In both cultures, emotion, national importance, and thinking about the event predicted vividness and recall of memory details. Chinese participants reported primarily disasters and social events, and their memories were more likely to include international events than U.S. participants. The U.S. participants recalled primarily political events and terrorism. These results suggest that culture has important influences on the quantity, level of detail, completeness, and vividness of autobiographical memories as well as on the types of events triggering flashbulb memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes two experiments that investigated the effects of two thematic retrieval cues on the types of information recalled from short stories by elementary school children and adults. Shows adults and fourth graders, but not younger children, spontaneously generated thematic retrieval plans which enabled them to remember information from both themes. (HOD)

A modified automatic interaction detector (MAID) was combined with discriminant analysis (DA) to form MAIDDA and to determine whether it might improve classification results over classical DA methods. Application of MAIDDA to the 1983 and 1984 Air Force Academy's graduating classes (N = 3,012) showed that it is a promising clustering technique. (TJH)

Emotional material rarely occurs in isolation; rather it is experienced in the spatial and temporal proximity of less emotional items. Some previous researchers have found that emotional stimuli impair memory for surrounding information, whereas others have reported evidence for memory facilitation. Researchers have not determined which types of emotional items or memory tests produce effects that carry over to surrounding items. Six experiments are reported that measured carryover from emotional words varying in arousal to temporally adjacent neutral words. Taboo, non-taboo emotional, and neutral words were compared using different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), recognition and recall tests, and intentional and incidental memory instructions. Strong emotional memory effects were obtained in all six experiments. However, emotional items influenced memory for temporally adjacent words under limited conditions. Words following taboo words were more poorly remembered than words following neutral words when relatively short SOAs were employed. Words preceding taboo words were affected only when recall tests and relatively short retention intervals were used. These results suggest that increased attention to the emotional items sometimes produces emotional carryover effects; however, retrieval processes also contribute to retrograde amnesia and may extend the conditions under which anterograde amnesia is observed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]