The Big Memory Share

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The Leeds Memory Group, led by Professor Martin Conway, has created an online survey linked to a week of features about memory on BBC One’s popular ‘The One Show’ programme starting on Monday 20 April.

Psychologists want to record viewers’ very first memory from childhood and also their memories of items of major public news – ‘flashbulb’ memories.   Their aim is to gather more than 20,000  samples to help them with their ongoing work into how children develop a capacity for memory, how adults process memory and how memories change as people get older. 

Professor Conway, who is appearing in the television programme with his colleague Dr Catriona Morrison, said: “By linking to ‘The One Show’ we feel that we have the best chance of creating the world’s biggest and newest database of memories.  If we can collect huge number of memories we are better able to analyse the characteristics of memories and to find out what is the ‘norm’. 

“The general view is that we can’t have memories before a certain age or before we are walking or talking.  There is a real need to discover the accuracy of childhood memories  – for example, in court cases related to alleged childhood abuse.

“We want people to describe a memory that really is their first memory – not one from a family story or photograph.

“People will tend to have fewer so called ‘flashbulb’ memories,” continued Professor Conway,” but they are important in helping us to better understand how the human memory works.  We want to know about people’s personal circumstances when they heard of key news and events – the who, what, where and when.  Just what are the sorts of events that give rise to the formation of these memories?”

The Memory Group last surveyed ‘flashbulb’ memories in 2006.  Then the number one memory was 9/11 followed by the assassination of John F Kennedy and the news of the death of Princess Diana. The Leeds psychologists have most recently been looking at how the music of The Beatles plays a role in triggering memories.

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