Discussion
’, traumatic, memory deterioration, PTSD, trauma
EVENTS, EVENT, MACLEOD, SECONDARY
This study investigated the effect of ImRs on voluntary memory of an aversive autobiographical event in a healthy sample. Given the scarcity of studies in this area, the findings contribute to the debate about whether trauma-focused imagery-based interventions diminish memory accuracy of autobiographical (traumatic) events.Contrary to expectations, ImRs did not increase the number of incorrect details reported in the free recall. However, we observed that the number of correct details reported in free recall increased in ImRs compared to the number reported in NIC. Hence, free recall findings did not support the assumption that ImRs deteriorates autobiographical memory, but instead suggest that the validity of voluntary autobiographic memory might even Results of the cued recall did not show any differential effects between conditions. However, participants’ memory performance decreased over time in both conditions (i.e., increase in incorrect answers, decrease in correct answers). This was paralleled by a decrease in cued recall performance (i.e., higher number of features not remembered) in both conditions over the 3-month follow-up period. These findings of memory deterioration over time across tasks are most likely due to normal forgetting processes (MacLeod, Although some researchers (Brainerd & Reyna, The assumption that source errors are more likely when imagery is generated unintentionally than when it is generated intentionally is consistent with the view of the Source-Monitoring Framework. Enhanced cognitive operations associated with a memory can make participants aware that the change was internally generated and thus facilitate discrimination (Henkel & Carbuto, Moreover, our findings indicate that ImRs might even lead to an improved memory. The revised Dual Representation Theory (Brewin et al., The fact that ImRs did not deteriorate voluntary memory is in line with earlier studies looking at the effect of ImRs on voluntary memory in secondary analyses (Hagenaars & Arntz, The current findings compete with the wider basic memory literature showing that imagination can lead to distortions of voluntary memory (Garry et al., On the one hand, the goals, rationale, and exact procedures of imagery-based interventions could be of relevance. The aforementioned studies (e.g., Garry et al., On the other hand, it may be important how declarative change is measured. Previous studies (Garry et al., Some limitations of the current study have to be kept in mind. First, TSST exposure is not comparable with experiencing a genuine trauma and is rather a mild manipulation, as indicated by not very high negative affect scores and stable positive affect scores throughout TSST. Future research could modify the TSST to further intensify negative affectivity and reduce positive affectivity. However, TSST still led to large increases in negative affect and triggered as many intrusions within a week as various trauma films did in previous studies (Arnaudova & Hagenaars, Nevertheless, the generalizability of our results to a PTSD patient sample are limited (Brewin, In sum, this study provides important novel evidence regarding the ongoing debate about whether imagery-based interventions might reduce memory accuracy of distressing events. Contrary to commonly held assumptions, no memory deterioration caused by ImRs was observed. This may weaken the position that after imagery-based interventions, survivors’ accounts of their traumatic experiences cannot be deemed credible in the legal context. Importantly, we even observed an improvement of voluntary memory following ImRs. Future theoretical development and empirical research is needed to specify the circumstances under which trauma-focused treatment does or does not influence voluntary memory. This will help both victims and therapists to balance therapeutic and judicial concerns.