New directions for flashbulb memories: comments on the ACP Special Issue

This commentary briefly addresses each of the ten papers in the special issue. The commentator's assessment is mixed: some of the papers seem to represent little or no advance, while others open up whole new areas of research. A number of concepts new to this area are introduced, including event memory (which was probably biased by extensive media coverage), expressive writing (which may have helped at least some participants deal with the stresses of 9/11), and the subjective probabilities of success and failure (which may have been temporarily shifted across whole populations). Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.