Trauma exposure in childhood impairs the ability to recall specific autobiographical memories in late adolescence.
J. M. G. Williams (1996) predicted that exposure to potentially traumatizing events at an early age would give rise to overgeneral recall from autobiographical memory, i.e., recall of general rather than specific events, and that in adolescence this tendency would be uncorrelated with psychopathological symptoms, e.g., depression. This was supported by two studies where war-exposed Bosnian adolescents produced significantly fewer specific autobiographical memories than a Norwegian control group, as did bombing-exposed Serbian adolescents compared to nontrauma-exposed Serbians. No significant correlations were found between autobiographical memory specificity and measures of depression, anxiety, dissociation or impact of trauma, which is consistent with Williams' idea that an overgeneral memory retrieval strategy is at first protective, and a risk factor for depression only upon reaching adulthood.
Brennen
Tim
T
Center for the Study of Human Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway. tim.brennen@psykologi.uio.no
Hasanović
Mevludin
M
Zotović
Marija
M
Blix
Ines
I
Skar
Ane-Marthe Solheim
AM
Prelić
Nera Kravić
NK
Mehmedović
Indira
I
Pajević
Izet
I
Popović
Nemanja
N
Gavrilov-Jerković
Vesna
V
D000293:Adolescent; D017522:Bosnia and Herzegovina; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D002666:Psychology, Child; D055771:Serbia; D014857:Warfare; D055815:Young Adult