Are Trauma Memories Disjointed from Other Autobiographical Memories in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder? An Experimental Investigation

Overview

Journal Behav Cogn Psychother

Publisher Cambridge University Press

Specialties Psychiatry
Social Sciences

Date 2011 Jan 19

PMID 21241538

Citations 9

Authors

Birgit Kleim

Franziska Wallott

Anke Ehlers

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

This study tested the hypothesis that trauma memories are disjointed from other autobiographical material in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Assault survivors with (n = 25) and without PTSD (n = 49) completed an autobiographical memory retrieval task during script-driven imagery of (a) the assault and (b) an unrelated negative event. When listening to a taped imagery script of the worst moment of their assault, survivors with PTSD took longer to retrieve unrelated non-traumatic autobiographical information than those without PTSD, but not when listening to a taped script of the worst moment of another negative life event. The groups also did not differ in general retrieval latencies, neither at baseline nor after the imagery tasks. The findings are in line with suggestions that traumatic memories are less integrated with other autobiographical information in trauma survivors with PTSD than in those without PTSD.

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