Citation

McNally RJ, Clancy SA, Schacter DL. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 2001; 110(1): 151-156.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. rjm@wjh.harvard.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11261390

Abstract

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.

Language: en