Fantasy proneness, but not self-reported trauma is related to DRM performance of women reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.
Extending a strategy previously used by , we administered a neutral and a trauma-related version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm to a sample of women reporting recovered (n=23) or repressed memories (n=16) of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), women reporting having always remembered their abuse (n=55), and women reporting no history of abuse (n=20). We found that individuals reporting recovered memories of CSA are more prone than other participants to falsely recalling and recognizing neutral words that were never presented. Moreover, our study is the first to show that this finding even held when trauma-related material was involved. Correlational analyses revealed that fantasy proneness, but not self-reported traumatic experiences and dissociative symptoms were related to false recall and false recognition.
Geraerts
Elke
E
Department of Neurocognition, University of Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands. E.Geraerts@Psychology.Unimaas.NL
Smeets
Elke
E
Jelicic
Marko
M
van Heerden
Jaap
J
Merckelbach
Harald
H
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology*; D004213:Dissociative Disorders; D005201:Fantasy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010551:Personality; D011581:Psychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012094:Repression, Psychology