Flashbulb Memories for September 11th can be Preserved in Older Adults

ABSTRACT

Flashbulb memories (FMs) are vivid, long-lasting memories for the source of surprising, arousing news. Laboratory studies have consistently found that older adults, especially those with below-average frontal lobe (FL) function, are impaired in source memory relative to young. We tested memory for the source of news concerning the September 11th terrorist attacks in older adults with high or low frontal lobe function and in young people. We found no age differences in source memory a year after the event and no differences related to FL function. Flashbulb memories may be different from usual cases of source memory because of their emotional content, personal importance, or social relevance.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by fellowships from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to P. D., and a National Institute on Aging grant (AG 14792) to E. G. A preliminary version of this report received the 2003 Completed Doctoral Research Award from the Division of Adult Development and Aging of the American Psychological Association. We thank Claire Conlon, Maria Marquine, Michael Robinson, and Andrea Soulé for assistance. We are grateful to Lee Ryan and Malcolm Binns for discussion of the statistical analyses.

Notes

¹ The composite measure of medial temporal lobe function (see Glisky et al., 1995, 2001) was based on Logical Memory I, Faces I, and Verbal Paired Associates I from the WMS-III, Visual Paired Associates II from the Wechsler Memory Scale—Revised (WMS-R) (Wechsler, 1987), and Long Delay Cued Recall on the CVLT (Delis et al., 1987).