Citation

Read JD, Lindsay DS. J. Trauma. Stress 2000; 13(1): 129-147.

Affiliation

University of Lethbridge, Canada. jdread@uvic.ca

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1023/A:1007781100204

PMID

10761179

Abstract

Claims regarding amnesia for childhood sexual abuse have often been based on studies of adults' responses to questions of the form, "Was there ever a period of time when you remembered less of the abuse than you do now?" In this experiment, 43 adult (mean age = 42) participants rated their current and prior memories of several nontraumatic childhood/adolescent events. Reports of prior periods of less memory were fairly common. Participants then engaged in "reminiscence" or "enhanced" retrieval activities directed toward remembering more about a selected target event. Following retrieval, 35% of the reminiscence condition participants reported prior poor memory for the target event, as did 70% of the enhanced condition. These results highlight the need for appropriate control conditions in retrospective studies of amnesia for childhood trauma.

Language: en