Abstract
Clinical theories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest that trauma memories are disorganized. In the present study, we examined how trauma-film exposure affects two aspects of memory disorganization, poor memory recall and memory disjointedness, and their relationship to PTSD-like symptoms. In Session 1, 90 healthy participants were exposed to a trauma (n = 60) or a neutral film (n = 30). Cognitive processing styles, memory characteristics, and intrusive memories of the film were assessed. The trauma-film group reported greater memory disjointedness of the worst moments of the film but better memory recall of the film than the neutral-film group. In the trauma-film group, cognitive processing and memory disjointedness were related to intrusive memories and PTSD-like symptoms in the week after film exposure. Memory disjointedness but not poor memory recall mediated the relationship between cognitive processing and intrusions. The findings suggest that different aspects of memory disorganization need to be distinguished to explain PTSD symptoms.
Highlights
Trauma survivors with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) involuntarily re-experience facets of their trauma very vividly, while at the same time experiencing difficulties in voluntarily recalling some aspects of the trauma (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
The ANOVA for poor recall showed significant main effects of time, F(1, 73) = 13.62, p < .001, ηp2 = .16, 95% CI = [.03, .30] and group, F(1, 73) = 4.00, p = .049, ηp2 = .05, 95% CI = [.00, .17], indicating that poor memory recall increased with time and that the neutral-film group reported poorer recall compared with the trauma-film group
The study distinguished between poor recall and memory disjointedness, as inconsistent results in the literature suggested that different aspects of memory disorganization may differ in their relevance to the development of re-experiencing symptoms
Summary
Ethical approval was obtained from the Medical Sciences Inter-Divisional Research Ethics Committee of the University of Oxford. All 90 participants (100%) attended the 1-week follow-up and 75 (50 from the trauma-film group, 25 from the neutral-film group) completed an online questionnaire at Day 3 (83%). The Memory Questionnaire, developed by Halligan et al (2003), was adapted to more clearly distinguish between disjointedness, that is, poor links between different parts of the memory and preceding and subsequent information (four items; e.g., “My memories of the worst moments of the film feel disconnected from/not joined up with/separate from what happened beforehand and afterwards”), and aspects of difficulties in recall, for example, memory gaps or difficulty remembering the order of the event (four items; e.g., “I feel that my memory for the film is incomplete”). Participants rated how much each statement applied to their memory of the film on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 4 (very much so strongly).
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