Title: The flashbulb-like nature of memory of the first covid-19 case and the impact of emergency

Abstract

The unexpected experience of COVID-19 allows us to investigate people's memories of the news of the first case in own country. When a shocking, significant and surprising public event occurs, people retain in their memory not only central details related to the original event, but also peripheral details related to the context of reception of the news for a long time. This particular type of memory was developed by Brown and Kulik in 1977 and called Flashbulb Memory (FBM). As part of an international project involving several countries around the world, the research focuses on FBMs messages created during the time of the pandemic by asking people to report details about the context of reception of the messages. The aim of the study is to test the impact of COVID -19 related variables on FBM formation, such as personal subjective variables (health concerns; perceived severity by country; unexpectedness of importance, percentage of time spent thinking/discussing/searching news about the pandemic) and objective country-level variables (severity of morbidity, mortality and government restrictions). We then compare responses to understand whether FBM formation varies across countries. The data were collected with an international survey conducted by researchers from the participating countries. To explore possible relationships between variables, hierarchical multiple regression models were used to assess whether personal subjective variables namely health concerns, perceived severity, unexpectedness of the event COVID-19, importance of the event, percentage of time spent thinking/discussing/searching for news about the pandemic, and/or objective country level variables such as severity of morbidity, mortality and government restrictions, were able to influence flashbulb recall. In addition, predictive machine learning techniques were used to examine key covariates (gender, age, geographic residence, impact of the pandemic, perceived and objective severity, and unexpectedness, importance and recurrence) that may explain different degrees of specificity of flashbulb memories.