From previous circumstance, I have experienced divided attention during the processing of an impactful flashbulb memory shifting my focus from myself immediately to another person for concern of emotional well-being. Because flashbulb memories are said to form part of automatic processing, is it possible that during divided attention, automatic processing still occurs and is this either more or less impactful to the processing of flashbulb memories.
A reflection of Attentional factors during the processing of an impactful Flashbulb Memory
Hi Amy,
The lack of responses I think means that no one on RG knows well enough to answer. I guess the next best thing is to ask why the research community would not know. I have been thinking how would you design a study to test your question? Given the events often associated with FB research (see attached for problems with this) are often extended events (i.e., different than say witnessing a crime) and grab attention it is difficult to think that natural encoding of these events would include many with divided attention (and these folks might not be representative of the whole population). And (depending on your definition of FBs) FB encoding research is difficult to perform in the lab for practical/ethical reasons.
Might be worth asking about divided attention effects on the encoding of emotional stimuli.
Dan
Data Wright 2009 Flashbulb memory methods
One obvious prediction stemming from Broadbent's filter model of attention (1958) is a definite "Yes it is more difficult." Broadbent's theory of selective attention was that we had a limited capacity to process information with attentional resources. Therefor, divided attention during the episode of flashbulb memory might indicate impoverished elements to form a flashbulb memory might be present.
An example might be driving a truck in heavy demanding traffic while hearing news on the radio that a major celebrity has died. You might be too worried about getting into an accident and visually scanning the road while navigating through tricky traffic to get the flashbulb of the memory to encode much of the total situation other than an image of the radio dial and feeling of sadness. This is at least a prediction model that you could base a hypothesis from if you do the experiment.
Broadbent, D. (1958). Perception and Communication. London: Pergamon Press.
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