Reality Monitoring for Sexual Abuse Memories

Abstract

The reality monitoring model of Johnson and Raye proposes that the phenomenal characteristics of memories for real and imagined events are utilized in reality monitoring judgements. This study examined the reality monitoring strategies utilized by subjects when remembering sexual abuse, and compared them with the strategies utilized for other types of events. Thirty‐one subjects described how they knew that four different autobiographical events (a sexual abuse experience, another unrelated trauma experience, a social occasion, and an imagined event) had, or had not, happened. Sexual abuse experiences were found to elicit a unique reality monitoring response profile. This profile suggests that the characteristics of memory for sexual abuse may be more vivid than other memories. In addition, the profile for sexual abuse shows fewer contextual supporting memories than other real memories, and more psychological reasoning responses. The finding that emotional rehearsal can cause fading of perceptual detail was not found to hold for the long‐term autobiographical memories that were the object of this study. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Credibility and event frequency: Assessing the credibility of adults who recall a repeated event using reality monitoring.

“…A second limitation of this experiment is that speakers recalled events that are not comparable to the lived experience of repeated abuse. As emotional memories and memories of abuse tend to be more vivid than neutral memories (e.g., Ward and Carroll, 1997), it is important that future research investigates the effectiveness of Reality Monitoring when repeated-event speakers recall a stressful event.…”

Crashing memories and reality monitoring: distinguishing between perceptions, imaginations and ‘false memories’

“…If the MCQ is to be applied to the issue of contested claims of childhood trauma, more research will be needed regarding the MCQ profiles of memories of sexual abuse (e.g. Ward and Carroll, 1997). Perhaps most interestingly of all, the findings of the present study suggest that more research is needed to clarify the possible effects of compliance, or eagerness to appear to be 'good subjects', on false memory reports that are produced in the laboratory.…”

Memory of Childhood Sexual Abuse Among Clinicians: Characteristics, Outcomes, and Current Therapy Attitudes

“…Clinical experience and newer research on the biology of trauma supports a relationship between extreme stress and alterations in memory. In particular, it is thought that memory for traumatic events may differ from memory for other types of experiences (e.g., Van der Kolk & Fisher, 1995; Van der Kolk & Van der Hart, 1991;Ward & Carroll, 1997).…”