Danes with ties to the World War II Danish resistance movement
have far more vivid, detailed and accurate memories of
occupation and liberation than their countrymen who were
unaffiliated with the resistance movement, according to a study
in the May Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (Vol.
134, No. 2). Furthermore, the memories of most of the study's
participants were far more accurate than results of studies of
short-range flashbulb memory would have predicted, according to
lead researcher Dorthe Berntsen, PhD, of the University of
Aarhus in Denmark. The term "flashbulb memory" describes the
vivid recall of time, place and other personal contextual
information during a stressful, emotional and often historical
event, like 9/11 or the German occupation and subsequent
liberation of Denmark. Past studies have traditionally tested
short-range flashbulb memory, assessing participants immediately
after a monumental event and then retested them after various
time periods, such as one year. Most such studie