Living in history: How some historical events shape our memory
April 23, 2009  If you are resident of New Orleans, how would
you describe personal events that occurred shortly before August
2005? Would you refer to them as happening "back in July of
2005" or would you describe them as happening "just before
Hurricane Katrina"? If you live in Oregon, would you make
reference to Hurricane Katrina? A team of researchers, led by
psychologist Norman R. Brown from the University of Alberta,
investigated how public events (e.g., war, natural disaster,
terrorism) shape our personal memories.  The experiment was
conducted in two parts and included participants from ten cities
around the world. First, the participants were shown a list of
words and had to write down personal memories associated with
those words (e.g., when they learned to ride a bike or when they
were by a river). Next, they thought aloud as they remembered
when those personal events occurred. The participants were tape-
recorded during this part of th