Remembering and forgetting traumatic experiences

Christianson, Sven‐Åke; Engelberg, Elisabeth

doi:10.1093/med:psych/9780198523864.003.0010

Cited by 27 publications

(30 citation statements)

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“…When witnesses are personally involved, they are more likely to engage in increased monitoring or scanning of the situation in order to understand what is going on and to ensure that the behavioural response selected is most ef®cient. Christianson and Engelberg (1997) have speculated that maintaining a state of awareness and readiness is likely to be essential from a survival or evolutionary perspective and better memory for dangerous situations may be adaptive in the sense that if such events can be clearly remembered, they can be avoided in the future (O'Carroll et al, 1999).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Watching the birdie watching you: eyewitness memory for actions using CCTV recordings of actual crimes

Woolnough

Macleod

2001

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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In this paper we describe a method of assessing eyewitness performance for actual crimes that could prove a valuable addition to more traditional experimental and ®eld-based approaches to the study of eyewitnessing. We present the ®ndings of the ®rst reported attempt to assess the accuracy of information contained in police statements given by eyewitnesses to actual criminal episodes using CCTV as a means of veri®cation. Employing the criterion of using only those items that could be veri®ed against CCTV recordings (largely action details), both victims and bystanders from eight incidents of assault were found to be highly accurate in their accounts (96% accurate). These results are discussed in terms of what they might indicate about the relationship between arousal and eyewitness performance and how they compare with laboratory and other ®eld-based approaches to the study of eyewitness memory. In addition, we consider some of the methodological, technological and practical constraints associated with this novel approach and its possible future applications to the study of everyday memory as well as memory for unusual events.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Watching the birdie watching you: eyewitness memory for actions using CCTV recordings of actual crimes

Woolnough

Macleod

2001

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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“…In summary, two important functions of memory for emotion are to guide goal-directed action and to help individuals develop a coherent picture of their lives, rather than to serve as an indelible record of the past (Christianson & Engelberg, 1997;Conway & PleydellPearce, 2000;Schacter, 2001). Although memory accuracy is often considered crucial for effective decision-making and self-knowledge, forgetting and selection in memory for emotion may be better thought of as learning.…”

Section: Functions Of Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functions of remembering and misremembering emotion

Levine¹,

Lench

Safer

2009

Applied Cognitive Psychology

112

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Memory for the emotions evoked by past events guides people's ongoing behaviour and future plans. Evidence indicates that emotions are represented in at least two forms in memory with different properties. Explicit memories of emotion can be retrieved deliberately, in a flexible manner, across situations. Implicit memories of emotion are brought to mind automatically by cues resembling the context in which an emotional event occurred. One property they share, however, is that both types of memory are subject to forgetting and bias over time as people's goals and appraisals of past emotional events change. This article reviews the cognitive and motivational mechanisms that underlie stability and change in memory for emotion. We also address functions that remembering and misremembering emotion may serve for individuals and groups. Although memory bias is typically viewed as problematic, changes in representations of emotional experience often promote goal-directed behaviour and facilitate coping with challenging situations.

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“…Does it pertain to the so-called peripheral aspects or to the central, most threatening aspect of the abuse (cf. Christianson, 1992;Christianson and Engelberg, 1997)? Such findings may shed more light on theoretical questions such as whether ordinary or abnormal processes of information processing and forgetting were at play.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forgetting child abuse: Feldman-Summers and Pope's (1994) study replicated among Dutch psychologists

Westerhof

Woertman

Hart

et al. 2000

Clin. Psychol. Psychother.

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In a replication of Feldman-Summers and Pope's (1994) national survey of American Psychologists on 'forgetting' childhood abuse, a Dutch sample of 500 members of the Netherlands Institute of Psychologists (NIP), were asked if they had been abused as children, and, if so, whether they had ever forgotten some or all of the abuse for some significant period of time. As compared to the 23.9% in the original study, 13.3% reported childhood abuse. Of that subgroup, 39% (as compared to 40% in the original study) reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse for a period of time. Both sexual and non-sexual physical abuse were subject to forgetting which in 70% of cases was reversed while being in therapy. Almost 70% of those who reported forgetting also reported corroboration of the abuse. The forgetting was not related to gender or age, but was associated with the reported early abuse onset. These results were remarkably similar to the results of

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Remembering and forgetting traumatic experiences

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

Watching the birdie watching you: eyewitness memory for actions using CCTV recordings of actual crimes

Watching the birdie watching you: eyewitness memory for actions using CCTV recordings of actual crimes

Functions of remembering and misremembering emotion

Forgetting child abuse: Feldman-Summers and Pope's (1994) study replicated among Dutch psychologists

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