When I was in fourth grade, my family and I took a trip to Florida. We visited the Everglades where you can take a bike ride through them and tour the whole area. Along the bike path, there were swamps where live alligators would be. There were even some alligators lying outside of the swamps just inches way from the bike path. They weren’t dangerous unless you taunted them, in fact they hardly even moved. If you didn’t look closely enough you would probably think they were statues. Also along the bike path there were occasionally tour buses that would come that were available for people if they did not want to bike the whole path. Whenever a bus was coming close, all bikers had to pull off the side of the path and make room for the bus to get by. My family and I were only about three miles away from getting back to the car when a bus started coming towards us. The rest of my family pulled off to the side just fine, however, I was the youngest and was struggling a little with my bike. I tried my best to pull over without falling but I just couldn’t balance myself. Before I knew it I was soaking wet with swamp water all over me. Of course I was mad I fell into the water, but I was more concerned about an alligator being in the water with me. Quickly, my mom pulled me out of the water and I was back on land, safe and sound.

To me, this is a flashbulb memory. Flashbulb memories are when an “unexpected event has strong emotional associations for the person remembering it.” Because it has such a strong association, the memory seems to have much more vivid details and I feel like it just happened yesterday. Since it has such a high emotional effect on me that memory also went through automatic encoding which is when information requires less or almost no rehearsing for it to fully be encoded.

Since I’m the youngest in my family, they like to pick on my a lot and of course this story is always everyone’s favorite. Because of that, I have heard this story be told countless times. A possible reason behind me thinking I remember every single detail of this incident is because of the misinformation effect, which is when information heard after the event influence a person’s actual memory of the event. I will hear my mom tell the story and think I am recalling my memory, but really I am just being influenced by her recall of the incident.

*Definitions from Psychology textbook.