Like screams and gentle whispers from the past, the fears and hopes that fill our mind are first evoked by the very same circumstances that dictated life or death on the African savanna. For many of us, the memory of that November afternoon in 1963 feels as though it has been frozen forever in photographic form, unaffected by the ravages of time that erode and degrade most other memories. Brown and Kulick did not query participants in their study about the JFK assassination until years after the event. To evaluate the accuracy of a flashbulb memory, we need some way to check the accuracy of a person's recollection. Yet even some highly consequential flashbulb events are not wholly unaffected by the passage of time that weakens other memories.
Some flashbulb memories are far from photographic preservations of the original scene.
So, our latest research shows that though flashbulb memories remain some of the most lasting memories we hold, they are still subject to decay. In fact, it is doubtful whether such memories are preserved by the Now Print mechanism that Brown and Kulick envisaged. The key to understanding how these type of memories are preserved over time is to understand the level of emotional arousal they produced, and the strengthening of the memory through repeated discussion of the event in sharing it with others. Thus, it is clear that the emotions elicited by a flashbulb event also increase its memorability. But even personally traumatic memories are sometimes subject to distortion.