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Press Releases
9/11 and death of Diana top Britain's most memorable events list
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A groundbreaking national survey for 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4 has found that the most common "flashbulb" memory among those polled is the events of 9/11.
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The death of Diana, Princess of Wales polled second and the assassination of President John F Kennedy (JFK), third.
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Radio 4 launched the largest ever national survey into the nation's personal memories in July 2006.
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The general public were asked to contribute three different types of memories: earliest memories, self-defining memories and flashbulb memories.
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Flashbulb memories are memories of public events that also have strong personal resonance, where the date and place can be named as well as where a person was and what they were doing at the time.
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More than 10,000 were posted on bbc.co.uk/memory and Professor Martin Conway has been analysing the findings with his team at the University of Leeds.
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Dr Mark Porter – one of the presenters who launched the survey last summer – announces the results today on Radio 4 at 9am.
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Throughout the day on Radio 4 a number of programmes explore the fascinating subject of memory and discuss the survey results in more detail.
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The survey also suggested women have earlier memories than men.
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One hypothesis for this is that the female brain may develop earlier than that of the male; another, that women and their mothers may be more likely to have conversations together in which they revisit and rehearse such memories.
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Of the 10,000 memories received, 6,672 were childhood memories and 1,800 of these dated to before the age of two, with 700 before the age of one.
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These 1,800 pre-verbal memories are a fascinating finding, as scientific literature argues that it is not possible for adults to remember an episode from a time when they do not have language.
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Mariella Frostrup will speak to many of the listeners who are adamant that they have memories from before they were two-years-old (In My Pram I Remember at 11am).
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And she will be hearing the scientific arguments as to why pre-verbal memories are not believed to be possible.
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Notes to Editiors
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The survey's headlines:
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Early memory
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- Women have earlier memories than men. This may be because women have more conversations with their mothers so have more opportunities to revisit and rehearse the memory. An alternative hypothesis is that the female brain develops earlier than the male.
- People with anxious attachments are more likely to see themselves in their early memory. According to some commentators, this would suggest that the memory has been "worked over" or revisited many times and is therefore false. It may be the memory has been changed as a form of defence if the adult had anxiety inducing experiences as a child.
- People with secure attachments are more likely to have memories from an original viewpoint and are less likely to see themselves in the memory. The same commentators would say that these memories are more likely to be valid.
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Flashbulb memory
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- The nation's top flashbulb memory is 9/11.
- The death of Diana, Princess of Wales polled second.
- The assassination of JFK polled third.
- Various other events were also remembered by significant numbers of respondents and among these were: resignation of Thatcher, death of John Lennon, assassination attempts on the Pope and President Reagan, and the moon landing. Amongst an older group the death of Stalin, plus a range of events relating to the Royal family, also featured.
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Self-defining memories
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Self-defining memories are memories of critical moments from a person's life. These are moments that marked major changes, strong emotions, and may feature negative as well as positive experiences. They are often of unresolved issues and are thought about more frequently than other memories.
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In the survey 1,758 self-defining memories were collected. These featured events such as:
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- Meeting a highly significant person, including one's partner.
- Overcoming a problem, most frequently an emotional or psychological.
- Memories of deaths and births, surprising meetings, religious experiences, and of moments of achievement in many different aspects of life.
- The memories spanned an age-at-encoding range from about five years to 70 years. Sixty per cent of all memories date to events occurring in the 15 to 25/30 years of age period. This period is called the "reminiscence bump".
- There were no specific gender differences.
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Radio 4 Publicity
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