“I remember the attack”: a pilot study investigating flashbulb memory in individuals with schizophrenia

Flashbulb memories are autobiographical memories for important and emotional events, which have the particularity of being at the intersection of personal and public events. Autobiographical memory impairments are highly prevalent in schizophrenia, a psychiatric condition intrinsically linked to self-disorders. Thus, we aimed to evaluate flashbulb and event memory functioning in individuals with schizophrenia. Twenty-four individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and 25 control participants were tested on a flashbulb memory questionnaire about the July 14th, 2016, Nice (France) terrorist attack, including questions on flashbulb and event memory, certainty, vividness, rehearsal, emotion, novelty, consequentiality, implication, and importance. Participants also underwent cognitive assessments. Analysis showed lower scores for both flashbulb and event memories in patients compared to control participants. Subjective ratings of the phenomenological characteristics of flashbulb memory were similar between the two groups overall. However, individuals with schizophrenia reported having higher levels of emotion when they first learned about the attack compared to the control group. Our results replicate findings of impaired autobiographical memory functioning in schizophrenia and extend these findings to public events. Our findings also indicate that flashbulb memories may lead to substantial contextual recall in schizophrenia patients and that collective memories, such as a terrorist attack, can have a profound emotional impact on patients.