On Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:58:50 -0700, Tim Shearon wrote:
>Mike Palij asked:
>>Do blind people have flashbulb memories?
>
>Mike-
>Aside from being a *little* puzzled by the question,
I assume that you're puzzled because the automatic interpretation of
a "flashbulb" memory is that it has a predominant visual component.
However, this assumes that visual mental images exists and as the
ongoing argument between Zenon Pylyshyn and Stephen Kosslyn about
the imagery debates shows, this is a problematic assumption to make.
For example, Pylyshyn would argue that your phenomenological
experience of visual mental imagery is an epiphenomenal by-product
of more fundamental abstract processing at the neural level which
you are not consciously aware of. Regardless of whether one is
pro-imagery or anti-imagery, as John Anderson pointed out in 1979
or thereabout, there was no way to definitively decide the issue at
that time nor does there appear to be a way today.
Since the issue has been undecidable, both sides just ignored each
other and went on they merry way. However, shortly after 2000,
Pylyshyn and Kosslyn apparently had nothing better to do, so they
revived the argument.
Getting back to "flashbulb" memories, the three characteristics that
I had in my initial post are, I believe, the core properties of a flashbulb
memory -- vision appears to necessary because sighted people have
been the ones who have been studied. However, imagine a congenitally
blind person listens to the television/radio about the descriptions of what
happened on 9/11, encodes the info, and has emotional and physiological
reactions like sighted people. Even though such a person could not
see the event, does this mean that such a person does not have a
flashbulb-like memory (i.e., more vivid and distinct relative to other
memories)? Perhaps one should ask a blind person if they can remember
what she/he was doing when they heard of the 9/11 attacks.
>did you search echoic memory, or other relevant modalities? I seem to
>remember studies that did address some of the same issues you mention
>relating particularly to echoic memory formation and retrieval involving
>similar events.
Echoic memory would not be relevant because we're not concerned with
sensory registers or very-short-term memories, rather, flashbulb memories
are distinctive autobiographical memories.
>(Or is this my own false memory?)
One nevers knows, does one? :-)
ALSO, regarding Allen Esterson's attempt to put up a URL for the Wikipedia
entry on Godwin's Law: the problem is that Wikipedia addresses with an
apostrophe (') get coded in a funky way and screws up the address (I've
had this happen to me before). A workaround is to take the address and
put it into www.tinyurl.com and get a "surrogate" for it, such as:
http://tinyurl.com/74azr
It may be possible to manually edit the wikipedia addres and to substitute
" ' " for the "%27" which it produces but I'm too lazy to try that out. :-)
-Mike Palij
New York University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
---
To make changes to your subscription contact:
Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
