title: Linking thought suppression and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.
abstract: There are two types of recovered memories: those that gradually return in recovered memory therapy and those that are spontaneously recovered outside the context of therapy. In the current study, we employed a thought suppression paradigm, with autobiographical experiences as target thoughts, to test whether individuals reporting spontaneously recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) are more adept at suppressing positive and anxious autobiographical thoughts, relative to individuals reporting CSA memories recovered in therapy, relative to individuals with continuous abuse memories, and relative to controls reporting no history of abuse. Results showed that people reporting spontaneously recovered memories are superior in suppressing anxious autobiographical thoughts, both in the short term and long term (7 days). Our findings may partly explain why people with spontaneous CSA memories have the subjective impression that they have "repressed" their CSA memories for many years.
authors.affiliation: Maastricht University, The Netherlands. E.Geraerts@Psychology.Unimaas.NL
authors.forename: Elke
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Geraerts
authors.forename: Richard J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: McNally
authors.forename: Marko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jelicic
authors.forename: Harald
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Merckelbach
authors.forename: Linsey
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Raymaekers
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D011613:Psychotherapy; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D016896:Treatment Outcome