Memory for neutral, emotional and trauma-related information in sexual abuse survivors

• Published in: European journal of psychotraumatology Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 1476439 - 10
• Main Authors: Forest, Marilyne, Blanchette, Isabelle
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Taylor & Francis 01.01.2018; Taylor & Francis Ltd; Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: abuso sexual; Basic; Emotions; Episodic memory; memoria episódica; memoria verbal; Memory; neuropsicología; neuropsychology; Post traumatic stress disorder; Recall; Sex crimes; Sexual abuse; Studies; Trauma; verbal memory; Women victims of sexual abuse show poorer episodic memory, generally, compared to control participants. This is true only for neutral and generally emotional information. Victims do not show episodic memory deficits when content is related to sexual abuse, even if the content is not autobiographical; 创伤; 性虐待; 情景记忆; 神经心理学; 言语记忆; trauma; verbal memory; neuropsychology; Women victims of sexual abuse show poorer episodic memory, generally, compared to control participants.• This is true only for neutral and generally emotional information.• Victims do not show episodic memory deficits when content is related to sexual abuse, even if the content is not autobiographical; Episodic memory; sexual abuse
• ISSN: 2000-8066; 2000-8066
• DOI: 10.1080/20008198.2018.1476439

Previous studies have shown that trauma-exposed individuals, including survivors of sexual abuse, show inferior performance in episodic memory tasks compared to non-exposed controls. This, however, has mainly been tested using neutral content. Our goal in this study was to determine whether this relative impairment in episodic memory extends to generally emotional and trauma-related content. Twenty-seven sexual abuse survivors and 27 control women participated in the study. They listened to stories with three content types (neutral, generally emotional and trauma-related) and performed a free-recall task immediately and 30 minutes later. Sexual abuse survivors showed poorer recall of neutral material compared to control participants. Lower recall was also observed for generally emotional content. However, importantly, there was no difference between groups in the recall of trauma-related content. The main novel contribution of this study is the demonstration that verbal episodic memory is not impaired for non-autobiographical trauma-related content in sexual abuse survivors. We discuss how this could be explained by personal relevance and attentional capture.