Repressive coping and the directed forgetting of emotional material

The shame of implicit racial bias

This study provides support for the theory that individual shame prevents individuals from recognizing their implicit racial biases. Participants across two studies in multiple conditions took the Race IAT, received feedback about their implicit racial bias, and then completed the Shame IAT. We created various conditions either to attribute their implicit racial bias to the self or to create an alternative explanation. The results demonstrated that when individuals attributed their implicit racial bias to themselves vs. an alternative attribution, they subsequently expressed higher levels of interpersonal shame, through increased associations between self-referential and shameful words. The need for positive self-esteem or the avoidance of a negative emotion such as shame may lead participants to avoid examining their own implicit racial biases.

The Return of Repression? Evidence From Cognitive Psychology

The controversy over alleged repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) was among the most contentious ever to embroil psychology and psychiatry. Adapting paradigms from cognitive psychology, my research group tested hypotheses pertinent to repressed memory and false memory interpretations of recovered memories. We tested adults who: (1) report recovering memories of CSA after not having thought about their abuse for years; (2) report never having forgotten their CSA; (3) believe they harbor "repressed" memories of CSA; and (4) deny having been sexually abused. We tested hypotheses about mechanisms that might figure in the inability to recall memories of one's abuse and those that might render one susceptible to developing false memories of abuse. The purpose of this article is to summarize this work. Finally, I draw on the work of Lionel Penrose to speculate about why the popularity of the concept of repressed memories of trauma-or its synonym, dissociative amnesia for trauma-may be rising today.

Tilting at Windmills: Why Attacks on Repression Are Misguided

In the November 2019 issue of Perspectives, Otgaar et al. argued that the "memory wars" persist and that "the controversial issue of repressed memories is alive and well and may even be on the rise" (p. 1072). Their thesis overlooked the well-established consensus that recovered memories of trauma may be genuine, false, or a mixture of the two and instead focused on a disputed mechanism: unconscious repression. A formal cocitation analysis identified the major publications mentioning repressed memories, but none endorsed a theory of unconscious repression. Studies of beliefs about repressed memories by the general public and other groups do not support Otgaar et al.'s thesis either because these studies did not adequately assess the key ideas defining the theory of repression. Clinical evidence is consistent with recovered memories occurring in many different forms of therapy, including ones that do not use suggestive techniques or rely on the concept of repression. Thus, Otgaar et al. have proposed the existence of a problem for which little objective evidence can be found. Continuing theoretical uncertainties about the mechanisms responsible for forgetting are less important than the general recognition since the 1990s that suggestive therapy and attempts to exhume memories are hazardous and generally inappropriate.

Do childhood memories colour social judgements of today? The case of repressors

Previous research has shown that individuals who possess a repressive coping style have significantly poorer recall of negative childhood memories and also exhibit more comparative optimism for negative events than nonrepressors. The current study investigated whether there is a relationship between recall of childhood memories and comparative optimism. Repressors (REP, low trait anxiety–high defensiveness, N = 20) were compared with specific nonrepressor groups on trait anxiety and defensiveness: low anxious (LA, N = 16), high anxious (HA, N = 16) defensive high anxious (DHA, N = 13), and a non‐extreme group (NE, N = 15) chosen from an initial pool of 163 female participants. For REP compared with all non‐REP, age of earliest negative memory recalled was significantly older and REP recalled significantly fewer negative childhood memories. For REP only there was a significant correlation between number of negative memories recalled and comparative optimism, with high comparative optimism correlated with a low number of negative childhood memories recalled. There were no other significant correlations with comparative optimism, overall, or for any of the sub‐groups. These results indicate a link between childhood and adult measures of social judgements for REP only. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI) focuses on failing suppression attempts

Experimental studies have produced evidence to suggest that suppressing unwanted thoughts paradoxically results in even more unwanted thoughts. Therefore, suppression is considered to be an inadequate control strategy. Wegner and Zanakos (1994; Journal of Personality, 62, 615–640) introduced the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI) as a measure to identify people who chronically tend to suppress unwanted thoughts. However, recent studies suggest that the WBSI does not exclusively measure thought suppression, but also addresses the experience of intrusive thoughts. Hence, the WBSI does not seem to measure suppression per se, but rather failing suppression. Three studies elaborate on this idea. In study 1, factor analysis of 674 non‐clinical WBSI scores is found to support the hypothesis that the WBSI addresses both suppression and intrusion. By and large, study 2 replicates these findings in a clinical sample (N=106). In study 3, an alternative suppression questionnaire is introduced, focusing on suppression and intrusions, but also on successful suppression. It is concluded that the WBSI, and thought suppression research in general, is biased toward failing suppression attempts, and has ignored the possibility of successful suppression. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

What can directed forgetting tell us about clinical populations?

This paper reviews and critically assesses the implications of directed forgetting (DF) research on clinical populations. We begin by reviewing the typical methods and results of the item method and list method directed forgetting procedures and provide best practice recommendations for future studies using clinical populations. Next, we note that DF was often interpreted as being due to inhibition, and when clinical populations showed impaired directed forgetting, it was treated as evidence in inhibitory control difficulties. However, inhibition may not be the cause of DF effects, based on current understanding of these cognitive tasks. We instead suggest that item method DF is tied to attentional control, which might include inhibitory mechanisms (or might not). In contrast, list method DF is tied to two forms of memory control: control of mental context (indicated by effective forgetting of List 1), and changes in the strategies used to remember (indicated by better learning of List 2). We review the current state of the clinical DF literature, assess its strength based on our best practice recommendations, and call for more research when warranted.

Coping with Pain in the Face of Healthcare Injustice in Patients with Sickle Cell Disease

To evaluate the pain coping strategies of patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) who experience healthcare injustice from either physicians or nurses during medical visits for pain management. It is unknown how patients' coping with pain relates to their experiences of healthcare injustice from physicians or nurses. This descriptive comparative study included adult outpatients with SCD who completed the PAINReportIt^®, Healthcare Justice Questionnaire^©, and Coping Strategies Questionnaire-SCD. Data were analyzed using independent t tests. Frequent coping strategies of patients who experienced healthcare justice from physicians were praying-hoping and from nurses were praying-hoping, calming self-statements, diverting attention, and increasing behavioral activity. In contrast, frequent coping strategies of patients who experienced healthcare injustice from physicians were catastrophizing and isolation and from nurses were isolation. Patients who experienced healthcare justice used different sets of pain coping strategies than those who experienced healthcare injustice during medical visits for pain management.

Weak evidence for increased motivated forgetting of trauma-related words in dissociated or traumatised individuals in a directed forgetting experiment

Motivated forgetting is the idea that people can block out, or forget, upsetting or traumatic memories, because there is a motivation to do so. Some researchers have cited directed forgetting studies using trauma-related words as evidence for the theory of motivated forgetting of trauma. In the current article subjects used the list method directed forgetting paradigm with both trauma-related words and positive words. After one list of words was presented subjects were directed to forget the words previously learned, and they then received another list of words. Each list was a mix of positive and trauma-related words, and the lists were counterbalanced. Later, subjects recalled as many of the words as they could, including the ones they were told to forget. Based on the theory that motivated forgetting would lead to recall deficits of trauma-related material, we created eight hypotheses. High dissociators, trauma-exposed, sexual trauma-exposed, and high dissociators with trauma-exposure participants were hypothesised to show enhanced forgetting of trauma words. Results indicated only one of eight hypotheses was supported: those higher on dissociation and trauma recalled fewer trauma words in the to-be-forgotten condition, compared to those low on dissociation and trauma. These results provide weak support for differential motivated forgetting.

Directed forgetting of negative performed actions is difficult: A behavioural study

Strong evidence suggests that both performing actions and emotional stimuli can enhance memory by capturing attention. However, the synergetic effect of the two factors on directed forgetting has not been assessed. In this study, we used an item-method directed forgetting paradigm to examine the forgetting of emotional materials depending on whether actions were performed. The results showed that action performance influenced the directed forgetting of emotional words. Specifically, when actions were performed there was a directed forgetting effect for neutral and positive words but not for negative words. In comparison, for verbal tasks, directed forgetting was observed for all words. The elaborative encoding prior to the remember/forget instructions and the influence of negative emotion on attentional inhibition after the presentation of the instructions together suggest that it is more difficult to intentionally forget negative performed actions.

Continuity and discontinuity in memory for threat

Using a paradigm that allows a quasi-continuous tracking of memory performance over time, two experiments were designed to test the hypotheses that (a) persons with a cognitively avoidant style of coping with threat manifest a dissociation between (intact) short-term and (reduced) long-term retrieval of aversive information and (b) persons with a vigilant coping style recall aversive information particularly well after long retention intervals, provided they are free to think about aversive events. Study 1 (N = 75) showed that avoiders manifest a poor memory for aversive pictures after long retention intervals only. Study 2 (N = 95) replicated this finding. In addition, manipulation of the cognitive load during the retention interval influenced vigilants' recall of aversive information in the predicted way. Results indicate that processes occurring during the retention interval are essential for individual difference in memory for aversive information and require similar attention as encoding, appraisal, and retrieval processes.

Influence of repressive coping style on cortical activation during encoding of angry faces

BACKGROUND

Coping plays an important role for emotion regulation in threatening situations. The model of coping modes designates repression and sensitization as two independent coping styles. Repression consists of strategies that shield the individual from arousal. Sensitization indicates increased analysis of the environment in order to reduce uncertainty. According to the discontinuity hypothesis, repressors are sensitive to threat in the early stages of information processing. While repressors do not exhibit memory disturbances early on, they manifest weak memory for these stimuli later. This study investigates the discontinuity hypothesis using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

METHODS

Healthy volunteers (20 repressors and 20 sensitizers) were selected from a sample of 150 students on the basis of the Mainz Coping Inventory. During the fMRI experiment, subjects evaluated and memorized emotional and neutral faces. Subjects performed two sessions of face recognition: immediately after the fMRI session and three days later.

RESULTS

Repressors exhibited greater activation of frontal, parietal and temporal areas during encoding of angry faces compared to sensitizers. There were no differences in recognition of facial emotions between groups neither immediately after exposure nor after three days.

CONCLUSIONS

The fMRI findings suggest that repressors manifest an enhanced neural processing of directly threatening facial expression which confirms the assumption of hyper-responsivity to threatening information in repression in an early processing stage. A discrepancy was observed between high neural activation in encoding-relevant brain areas in response to angry faces in repressors and no advantage in subsequent memory for these faces compared to sensitizers.

Triggering memory recovery: effects of direct and incidental cuing

The present study examined forgetting and recovery of narrative passages varying in emotional intensity, using what we refer to as the "dropout" method. Previous studies of this dropout procedure have used word lists as to-be-remembered material, but the present experiments used brief story vignettes with one-word titles (e.g., "Torture", "Insects"). These vignettes showed a strong dropout forgetting effect in free recall. Both text and picture cues from the vignettes eliminated the forgetting effect on a subsequent cued recall test. Vignette-related pictures in an incidental picture naming task, however, triggered little recovery of initially forgotten vignettes, as shown on a post-test. The results extend findings of large forgetting and memory recovery effects to materials that are more naturalistic than word lists. The findings also show that picture cues, which trigger strong memory recovery effects on a direct test of memory, had little effect on recovery when cues were encountered incidentally.

Which symptoms matter? Self-report and observer discrepancies in repressors and high-anxious women with metastatic breast cancer

Clinicians working with cancer patients listen to them, observe their behavior, and monitor their physiology. How do we proceed when these indicators do not align? Under self-relevant stress, non-cancer repressors respond with high arousal but report low anxiety; the high-anxious report high anxiety but often have lower arousal. This study extends discrepancy research on repressors and the high-anxious to a metastatic breast cancer sample and examines physician rating of coping. Before and during a Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), we assessed affect, autonomic reactivity, and observers coded emotional expression from TSST videotapes. We compared non-extreme (N = 40), low-anxious (N = 16), high-anxious (N = 19), and repressors (N = 19). Despite reported low anxiety, repressors expressed significantly greater Tension or anxiety cues. Despite reported high anxiety, the high-anxious expressed significantly greater Hostile Affect rather than Tension. Physicians rated both groups as coping significantly better than others. Future research might productively study physician-patient interaction in these groups.

[Self-reference judgments and directed forgetting of trait adjectives]

The influence of self-reference and emotionally valent material on list-method directed forgetting was investigated. Participants studied lists 1 and 2, both of which consisted of positive, negative, and neutral trait adjectives. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: self-reference judgment, social desirability judgment, and control (no specific judgment). Half of the participants in each condition received the forget instruction telling them to forget list 1 and to remember list 2 (forget group). The other half received the remember instruction telling them to remember both lists 1 and 2 (remember group). All participants were then asked to recall all the list words, including those that they were instructed to forget. Results indicated that the directed forgetting effect disappeared in the self-reference judgment condition: in the forget group, list 1 recall was poorer than recall of list 2, and the Forget group participants recalled fewer list 1 words compared to the remember group participants. Neither the emotional valence nor self-reference of the material modulated the magnitude of this effect. It is concluded that self-reference may modify directed forgetting.

Autobiographical memory development from an attachment perspective: the special role of negative events

The authors propose a novel model of autobiographical memory development that features the fundamental role of attachment orientations and negative life events. In the model, it is proposed that early autobiographical memory derives in part from the need to express and remember negative experiences, a need that has adaptive value, and that attachment orientations create individual differences in children's recollections of negative experiences. Specifically, the role of attachment in the processing of negative information is discussed in regard to the mnemonic stages of encoding, storage, and retrieval. This model sheds light on several areas of contradictory data in the memory development literature, such as concerning earliest memories and children's and adults' memory/suggestibility for stressful events.

Repressive coping style: relationships with depression, pain, and pain coping strategies in lung cancer outpatients

Researchers have shown that coping style is related to pain and adjustment in people with chronic illness. This study was the first to examine how coping style related to pain, pain coping strategies, and depression in lung cancer outpatients. We conducted a comparative, secondary data analysis of 107 lung cancer patients (73% male, mean age 61.4±10.43 years, 88% Caucasian). As in prior studies, we classified patients into four coping style groups based on Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale and trait anxiety scores. The coping style groups were low-anxious (n=25); high-anxious (n=31); defensive high-anxious (n=21); and repressive (n=30). Compared to other coping style groups, the repressive group reported statistically significant lower mean scores for pain quality, pain catastrophizing, and depression. Assessing coping style by measuring personal characteristics such as social desirability and trait anxiety may help clinicians to identify vulnerable individuals with lung cancer who may be candidates for early and timely intervention efforts to enhance adjustment to pain.

The importance of the repressive coping style: findings from 30 years of research

During the last three decades there has been substantial research exploring the repressive coping style as defined by Weinberger, Schwartz, and Davidson. As "repressors," who score low on trait anxiety and high on defensiveness, account for up to 50% of certain populations, they are an essential group for psychologists to study. However, there are methodological issues in identifying repressors as well as considerable evidence that repressors avoid negative self-relevant information. Possible methods of addressing these difficulties are discussed in this review. Importantly, there is a body of evidence linking repressive coping and poor physical health, including heart disease and cancer. However, some preliminary findings suggest that repressors compared to non-repressors may be better at health behaviors that they perceive as under their personal control. This needs more extensive investigation as such behaviors are only one aspect of health and other factors may contribute to repressors' poor physical health. Possible future directions of research are discussed including: the need for systematic empirical research of a new theory of repressive coping--the Vigilance-Avoidance Theory--more longitudinal health studies, and an in-depth exploration of the physiological mechanisms which may underlie repressive coping.

Repressive coping, emotional adjustment, and cognition in people who have lost loved ones to suicide

Research indicates that a repressive coping style is psychologically protective against the stress of trauma, yet it is unclear whether this finding generalizes to suicide bereavement. Thus, we assessed cognitive ability and mental health among individuals who lost a loved one to suicide. The results indicate that repressive coping may be associated with greater emotional health during suicide bereavement. Interestingly, "repressors" also had lower scores on both cognitive tasks compared to "nonrepressors," but it is unclear whether their more recent loss accounts for this difference. These results are based on cross-sectional data, and should be interpreted with caution.

Forgetting and Recovering the Unforgettable

Two experiments demonstrated striking, reversible forgetting effects that occurred even for a list of expletives. The experiments used a procedure based on the classic memory mechanisms of interference and retrieval cuing. Interference reduced recall dramatically, although appropriate cues triggered complete recovery. Distinctive, emotionally charged materials were quite susceptible to the forgetting and recovery effects. Thus, powerful forgetting effects can be obtained when participants have no intentions to forget and the materials involved are distinctive, emotional materials with sexual and violent content. This forgetting is reversible with appropriate cues. The false-memory debate can and must be informed by experimental investigations not only of false memories, but also of blocked and recovered memories.

Forgetting unwanted memories: directed forgetting and thought suppression methods

Experimental psychopathologists have tested hypotheses regarding mechanisms that ought to be operative if victims possess skills for forgetting material related to trauma. In this article, we review research on directed forgetting and thought suppression paradigms, concentrating on laboratory studies involving attempts by individuals reporting trauma histories to forget emotionally negative material. Most studies have shown that trauma survivors, especially those with post-traumatic stress disorder, are characterized by a breakdown in the ability to forget disturbing material. Studies on individuals reporting repressed or recovered memories of trauma have not confirmed predictions regarding heightened forgetting skills for trauma-related words. However, recent research on suppressing disturbing autobiographical memories suggests that people who report spontaneously recalling childhood abuse outside of psychotherapy may, indeed, possess skills for not thinking about disturbing material.

Memory on the beach: an Australian memory (and hypnosis) laboratory

The memory (and hypnosis) lab at the University of New South Wales investigates a broad range of memory topics. We try to find innovative methods from cognitive and clinical psychology to address theoretical and empirical questions about memory. We aso use hypnosis as one major methodological tool in our investigations of memory (as well as other cognitive processes). In this paper, we review the projects currently underway in our memory (and hypnosis) lab.

Autobiographical memory for trauma: update on four controversies

Empirical research since the year 2000 on trauma and autobiographical memory in adults is reviewed and related to four enduring controversies in the field: Whether traumatic memories are inherently different from other types of autobiographical memory; whether memory for trauma is better or worse than memory for non-traumatic events; whether traumas can be forgotten and then recalled later in life; and whether special mechanisms such as repression or dissociation are required to account for any such forgetting. The review concludes that trauma and non-trauma memories differ substantially, but only in clinical and not in healthy populations. Whereas involuntary memory is enhanced in clinical populations, voluntary memory is likely to be fragmented, disorganised, and incomplete. Progress in experimental and neuroimaging research will depend on analysing how task performance is affected by the interaction of voluntary and involuntary memory and by individual tendencies to respond to trauma with increased arousal versus dissociation.

Recovered memory and the Daubert criteria: recovered memory as professionally tested, peer reviewed, and accepted in the relevant scientific community

Research during the past two decades has firmly established the reliability of the phenomenon of recovered memory. This review first highlights the strongest evidence for the phenomenon itself and discusses the survey, experimental, and biological evidence for the varying mechanisms that may underlie the phenomenon. Routes to traumatic amnesia from dissociative detachment (loss of emotional content leading to loss of factual content) and from dissociative compartmentalization (failure in integration) are discussed. Next, an argument is made that false memory is a largely orthogonal concept to recovered memory; the possibility of one phenomena is largely irrelevant to the potential for the other. Furthermore, some aspects of the false memory research offer supportive data for the recovered memory researcher. Finally, the issue of error rates in making the Daubert case is explored. It is concluded that the weight of the evidence should allow the recovered memory victim to come before the court.

Effects of naltrexone on repressive coping and disclosure of emotional material: a test of the opioid-peptide hypothesis of repression and hypertension

OBJECTIVE

The present study was designed to assess the role of endogenous opioids in the relationship of hypertension to repressive coping.

METHODS

Ten hypertensive and 8 normotensive males were given either the opioid antagonist naltrexone or placebo in a randomized, double-blind fashion over the course of four laboratory sessions. Measures of repression and disclosure were completed and blood pressure was assessed during a laboratory stressor protocol.

RESULTS

Opioid antagonism reduced repression and increased disclosure only in the hypertensive group. Also, opioid antagonism increased stress-related systolic blood pressure only in the hypertensive group.

CONCLUSION

The results support the hypothesis that endogenous opioid dysregulation underlies both hypertension and repressive phenomena.

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 in PTSD: a comparative study versus normal controls

The most characteristic feature of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the reexperiencing syndrome. The patient's memory seems to be fixed on the traumatic event, which may be due to disturbance of the autobiographic memory. To retrieve memories, others have to be inhibited. These inhibition mechanisms have been studied using the Directed Forgetting Paradigm, which measures the capacity to forget recently processed information and to retain the relevant information. Our hypothesis is that during PTSD, the memory is saturated with traumatic memories, so that the patients are no longer able to use the inhibitory processes. Therefore, during a Directed Forgetting Task (DFT) in which words "to remember" and words "to forget" are given, PTSD patients cannot inhibit the words "to forget", and so recall more words than the controls. We studied 30 patients with PTSD and compared them with 30 healthy controls, using DFT. The results show that the patients remembered significantly fewer words overall, and fewer of the words "to remember" than the controls, both for immediate and final recall. Our results are in favor of a reduction in directed forgetting in patients suffering from PTSD, resulting in difficulty in inhibiting irrelevant information from the overall information. There seems to be a deficit in the inhibitory processes in the memory in PTSD.

Long term consequences of suppression of intrusive anxious thoughts and repressive coping

The current experiment employed a thought suppression paradigm to investigate whether repressors (N=40) are more skilled in suppressing positive and anxious autobiographical thoughts than low anxious (N=40), high anxious (N=40), and defensive high anxious (N=40) individuals, both immediately and over a longer time period (i.e., 7 days). Regardless of suppression instructions, repressors reported during their lab visit fewer target thoughts for their most anxious events than participants in the other three groups. However, over a 7 days period, repressors showed the highest number of intrusive thoughts about their anxious autobiographical events. Thus, our results demonstrate that repressive coping might be adaptive in the short run, but counterproductive in the long run.

An investigation of retrieval inhibition in acute stress disorder

Acute stress disorder is characterized by dissociative responses that are theorized to result in deficient encoding and retrieval of trauma-related material. This study examined retrieval inhibition using the list method of the directed forgetting paradigm in traumatized individuals with acute stress disorder (ASD; n = 14), no ASD (n = 14), and a nontraumatized control group (n = 15). Participants were presented with a list of intermixed positive, neutral, and trauma-related words. Instructions to forget that list and instead remember a second list were then given, and a new list presented. ASD participants exhibited poorer recall of to-be-forgotten trauma words than the non-ASD and control groups. The ASD group also demonstrated deficient recognition of to-be-remembered and to-be-forgotten positive words. Severity of acute posttraumatic stress response was associated with retrieval impairments. The cumulative findings suggest that ASD is associated with impoverished memory for trauma-related and positive material.

Destructive effects of “forget” instructions

In two experiments, participants were given three lists of words to study and were told to (1) remember all three lists, (2) forget the first list immediately after studying it but try to remember the other two lists, or (3) forget the middle list immediately after studying it but try to remember the first and the last lists. In Experiment 1, unrelated word lists were used, whereas Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with categorical lists. The results from both experiments showed that forgetting the middle list leads also to recall decrement for the first list, which was not intended for forgetting. The results are discussed in terms of the contextual change hypothesis of directed forgetting.

Psychological mechanisms in acute response to trauma

Traumatic events are common, but posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is relatively rare. These facts have prompted several questions: What variables increase risk for PTSD among trauma-exposed people? Can we distinguish between pathologic and nonpathologic responses to traumatic stressors? If so, what psychobiological mechanisms mediate pathologic responses? Prospective studies have identified certain individual difference variables as heightening risk (e.g., lower intelligence, negative personality traits). Studies on peritraumatic and acute-phase response have identified certain dissociative symptoms (e.g., time slowing, derealization) and cognitive appraisal (e.g., belief that one is about to die) as harbingers of later PTSD. Negative appraisal of acute symptoms themselves may foster chronic morbidity (e.g., that symptoms signify shameful moral weakness or prefigure impending psychosis). Further attempts to elucidate pathologic mechanisms in the cognitive psychology laboratory and via biological challenges are warranted.

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.