Forgetting of trauma cues in adults reporting continuous or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

According to betrayal trauma theory, adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) who were molested by their caretakers (e.g., a father) are especially likely to dissociate ("repress") their memories of abuse. Testing college students, some reporting CSA, DePrince and Freyd (2004) found that those scoring high on a dissociation questionnaire exhibited memory deficits for trauma words when they viewed these words under divided-attention conditions. Replicating DePrince and Freyd's procedure, we tested for memory deficits for trauma words relative to neutral words in adults reporting either continuous or recovered memories of CSA versus adults denying a history of CSA. A memory deficit for trauma words under divided attention was expected in the recovered-memory group. Results were inconsistent with this prediction, as all three groups exhibited better recall of trauma words than neutral words, irrespective of encoding conditions.     

False recognition in women reporting recovered memories of sexual abuse

False recognition—the mistaken belief that one has previously encountered a novel item—was examined in four groups of subjects: women reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, women who believe that they were sexually abused as children but who cannot recall this abuse (the "repressed" group), women who were sexually abused as children and always remembered the abuse, and women with no history of childhood sexual abuse. Subjects were administered a Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm. The results suggest that the recovered-memory group was more prone to false recognition than the other groups. In addition, women reporting recovered and repressed memories showed greater reduction in false recognition across study trials than did other subjects, perhaps reflecting strategic changes in performance.     

Retrieval inhibition of trauma-related words in women reporting repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

Several authors have argued that survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) who report to have repressed their traumatic memories are more skilled in forgetting emotional stimuli than survivors who have always remembered the abuse. The current experiment employed a list-wise directed forgetting task to investigate whether women reporting repressed (n = 16) or recovered (n = 23) memories of CSA are better at forgetting disturbing material, relative to women reporting having always remembered their abuse (n = 55) or reporting no history of abuse (n = 20). We found no support for the hypothesis that women reporting repressed or recovered memories of CSA are especially versed in inhibiting retrieval of trauma-related words. Additional analyses revealed that participants characterized by a repressive coping style did not display a superior retrieval inhibition mechanism for negative material.     

Directed forgetting of trauma cues in adults reporting repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

An item-cuing directed forgetting task was used to investigate whether women reporting repressed (n = 13) or recovered (n = 13) memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) exhibit an avoidant encoding style (and resultant impaired memory) for trauma cues relative to women reporting no CSA experience (n = 15). All participants viewed intermixed trauma (e.g., molested), positive (e.g., confident), and categorized neutral (e.g., mailbox) words on a computer screen and were instructed either to remember or to forget each word. The results provided no support for the hypothesis that people reporting either repressed or recovered memories of CSA are especially adept at forgetting words related to trauma. These groups recalled words they were instructed to remember more often than words they were instructed to forget regardless of whether they were trauma related.     

Reality monitoring in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse

People who report either repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may have deficits in reality monitoring--the process whereby one discriminates memories of percepts from memories of images. Using signal detection methods, the authors found that adults reporting either repressed or recovered memories of CSA were less able to discriminate between words they had seen from words they had imagined seeing than were adults reporting either never having forgotten their CSA or adults reporting no history of CSA. Relative deficits in the ability to discriminate percepts from images (i.e., low d') were apparent on only some tests. The groups did not differ in their criterion--response bias--for affirming having seen versus imagined stimuli.     

Linking thought suppression and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

There are two types of recovered memories: those that gradually return in recovered memory therapy and those that are spontaneously recovered outside the context of therapy. In the current study, we employed a thought suppression paradigm, with autobiographical experiences as target thoughts, to test whether individuals reporting spontaneously recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) are more adept at suppressing positive and anxious autobiographical thoughts, relative to individuals reporting CSA memories recovered in therapy, relative to individuals with continuous abuse memories, and relative to controls reporting no history of abuse. Results showed that people reporting spontaneously recovered memories are superior in suppressing anxious autobiographical thoughts, both in the short term and long term (7 days). Our findings may partly explain why people with spontaneous CSA memories have the subjective impression that they have "repressed" their CSA memories for many years.     

The reality of recovered memories: corroborating continuous and discontinuous memories of childhood sexual abuse

Although controversy surrounds the relative authenticity of discontinuous versus continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), little is known about whether such memories differ in their likelihood of corroborative evidence. Individuals reporting CSA memories were interviewed, and two independent raters attempted to find corroborative information for the allegations. Continuous CSA memories and discontinuous memories that were unexpectedly recalled outside therapy were more likely to be corroborated than anticipated discontinuous memories recovered in therapy. Evidence that suggestion during therapy possibly mediates these differences comes from the additional finding that individuals who recalled the memories outside therapy were markedly more surprised at the existence of their memories than were individuals who initially recalled the memories in therapy. These results indicate that discontinuous CSA memories spontaneously retrieved outside of therapy may be accurate, while implicating expectations arising from suggestions during therapy in producing false CSA memories.     

Cognitive processing of trauma cues in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse

Psychologically traumatized people exhibit delayed color naming of trauma words in the emotional Stroop task. Four groups of participants were asked to color name positive words, neutral words, and trauma words; these groups included 15 women who believed that they harbored repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), 13 women who reported recovered memories of CSA, 15 women who had never forgotten their CSA, and 12 women who had never been abused. Repressed-memory participants exhibited patterns of interference indistinguishable from those of the nonabused control group participants. Irrespective of group membership, the severity of self-reported posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms was the only significant predictor of trauma-related interference, r(48) = .30, p < .05.     

Fantasy proneness, but not self-reported trauma is related to DRM performance of women reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

Extending a strategy previously used by , we administered a neutral and a trauma-related version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm to a sample of women reporting recovered (n=23) or repressed memories (n=16) of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), women reporting having always remembered their abuse (n=55), and women reporting no history of abuse (n=20). We found that individuals reporting recovered memories of CSA are more prone than other participants to falsely recalling and recognizing neutral words that were never presented. Moreover, our study is the first to show that this finding even held when trauma-related material was involved. Correlational analyses revealed that fantasy proneness, but not self-reported traumatic experiences and dissociative symptoms were related to false recall and false recognition.     

False memories in women with self-reported childhood sexual abuse: an empirical study

Although controversy exists about the validity of memories of childhood abuse, little is known about memory function in individuals reporting childhood abuse. This study assessed memories for previously presented words, including the capacity for false memory of critical lures not actually present in the word list, in 63 subjects, including abused women with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), abused women without PTSD, and men and women without abuse or PTSD. Abused women with PTSD had a higher frequency of false recognition memory of critical lures (95%) than abused women without PTSD (78%), nonabused women without PTSD (79%), or nonabused men without PTSD (86%). PTSD women also showed poorer memory for studied words and increased insertions of non-studied words other than critical lures. These findings are consistent with a broad range of memory alterations in abused women with PTSD.     

People believe it is plausible to have forgotten memories of childhood sexual abuse

Pezdek, Blandon-Gitlin, and Gabbay (2006) found that perceptions of the plausibility of events increase the likelihood that imagination may induce false memories of those events. Using a survey conducted by Gallup, we asked a large sample of the general population how plausible it would be for a person with longstanding emotional problems and a need for psychotherapy to be a victim of childhood sexual abuse, even though the person could not remember the abuse. Only 18% indicated that it was implausible or very implausible, whereas 67% indicated that such an occurrence was either plausible or very plausible. Combined with Pezdek et al.’s findings, and counter to their conclusions, our findings imply that there is a substantial danger of inducing false memories of childhood sexual abuse through imagination in psychotherapy.     

Autobiographical memory specificity after manipulating retrieval cues in adults reporting childhood sexual abuse

Traumatized samples have relative difficulty in generating specific autobiographical memories on a cue word task, compared to nonexposed controls. Simultaneously, trauma is associated with highly specific intrusive trauma memories in day-to-day life. Possibly, day-to-day intrusions and memories generated to cue words rely on different retrieval processes, with the former dependent on close associations between retrieval cues and specific memory representations (direct retrieval), and the latter on iterative retrieval cycles through a hierarchical memory system (generative retrieval). This study investigated this distinction using two versions of the cue word task, designed to promote generative and direct retrieval, respectively, in participants with or without a history of child sexual abuse (CSA). The data demonstrated that CSA participants were less specific than nonabused controls to generative retrieval cues, but this difference disappeared with direct retrieval cues. This interaction was stronger in CSA participants with relatively greater posttraumatic stress and remained significant when participants with past or current major depressive disorder were excluded and also when only those participants with corroborated CSA were included.     

Adults' memories of childhood: affect, knowing, and remembering

Adult questionnaire respondents reported, for each of a number of events, if they had experienced that event during childhood and, if so, if they remembered the experience or merely knew it had happened. Respondents also rated the emotion of each event and judged whether they would remember more about each reportedly experienced event if they spent more time trying to do so. Study 1 respondents were 96 undergraduates, whereas Study 2 tested 93 community members ranging widely in age. Respondents often reported no recollections of reportedly experienced events. Reportedly experienced events rated as emotional were more often recollected than those rated as neutral, and those rated as positive were more often recollected than those rated as negative. Predicted ability to remember more was related to current memory. Claims of remembering reportedly experienced events increased with age, but predicted ability to remember more about them declined with age.     

Body satisfaction, eating disorders and suicide ideation in an Internet sample of self-harmers reporting and not reporting childhood sexual abuse

This study examined differences between self-harmers who had and who had not been sexually abused in childhood with regards to other risk factors and associated behaviours commonly identified in the research literature as being related to self-harm. Participants (N = 113, mean age = 19.92 years) were recruited via self-harm Internet discussion groups and message boards, and completed a web questionnaire assessing measures of body satisfaction, eating disorders, childhood trauma and suicide ideation. Self-harmers who reported a history of childhood sexual abuse scored higher on measures of body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, suicide ideation, physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse and emotional neglect. These findings implicate sexual abuse as a powerful traumatic event that can have severe repercussions on an individual, not only in terms of self-harming behaviour but also in terms of developing a wide range of maladaptive behaviours in conjunction with self-harm.     

Iatrogenic creation of false childhood sexual abuse memories: Controversy,dynamics, fantasy,and reality

This paper examines the phenomenon of False Memory Syndrome (FMS). In the last decade there has been an increase in the number of adult individuals who report childhood sexual abuse only to recant their allegations. Recanters and the falsely accused are specifying that therapeutic interventions by trusted and, at times, well intentioned therapists facilitated their false memories. The theory of repression, reliability of memory, recovery techniques, and characteristics of therapist and clients are explored. This paper also discusses a number of cases that have been filed, and some guidelines for therapists who work or plan to work in the recovery of repressed memories.     

Adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse

This paper outlines the conclusions drawn from a qualitative research study which involved in-depth interviews with 2.5 adult males who had been sexually abused during childhood. The full findings have been described in Adult Male Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse published by Pitman (1995). The book includes many of the men's first person accounts of their experiences of abuse.     

Recovered memories of alleged sexual abuse: Lawsuits against parents

Recently there has been increased civil litigation by adults suing parents and others for sexual abuse following the recovering of memories of the abuse through therapy. The memories are recovered with the help of therapists who use concepts such as repression and dissociation to account for the lack of memories and who then use techniques such as hypnosis and survivors' groups. However, the claims of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse recovered in the course of therapy are unlikely to be supported by empirical data.     

Sex differences in childhood sexual abuse and suicide-related behaviors

Child sexual abuse and suicide-related behaviors are associated, but it remains unclear if the strength of this association differs in boys and girls. In a systematic review of this association in children and youth, we identified 16 relevant studies, all cross-sectional surveys of students. The association is stronger in boys specific to suicide attempt(s). Adjustments for potential confounding variables explained some, but not all of this sex difference. While additional research would strengthen causal inferences, this sex difference may be influenced by the nature and timing of child sexual abuse as well as the sex of the perpetrator, which in turn shapes the disclosure of these events.     

The cost in remembering of ruminating on negative memories

This study investigated retrieval mechanisms that may be involved in memory for distressing stimuli. Forty-one nonclinical participants watched a video clip depicting the immediate aftermath of a serious car accident. Following this, half of the participants were instructed to focus attention on the victims of the accident and to consider the negative sequelae of their injuries. The remaining participants were not given any instructions. Following the Victim Focus/Control period, all participants completed a cued-recall task assessing their memory of the video clip. Overall, victim-related details were better recalled than nonvictim related details. It is important to note that participants in the Victim Focus condition retrieved fewer peripheral details than participants in the Control condition. These results suggest that people focusing attention on distressing aspects of an event can experience a cost in remembering other aspects of the event. These findings may be interpreted in terms of enhanced recollection of central events or retrieval-induced forgetting mechanisms to explain patterns of diminished memory for aspects of distressing events.