Dissociative experiences are related to commissions in emotional memory.
Two rival hypotheses of the link between dissociative experiences and emotional memory were tested: 1) the defence mechanism hypothesis that assumes that dissociation promotes fragmentation of emotional memory; and 2) the fantasy proneness hypothesis that claims that because of its overlap with fantasy proneness, dissociation is related to commissions in emotional memory. Undergraduates scoring high (n = 19) or low (n = 19) on the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) listened to an aversive story. Next, a free recall task was administered. While high dissociators made more commission errors in their free recall than did low dissociators, fantasy proneness did not account for this difference.
Department of Experimental Psychology, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. i.candel@psychology.unimass.nl
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Candel
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Merckelbach
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Kuijpers
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005201:Fantasy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory