Introduction
disorder, traumatic, stress disorder, PTSD, trauma
DISORDER, EVENTS, EVENT, SECONDARY
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent and disabling disorder triggered by traumatic experiences, such as experiencing physical or sexual violence, and often requires psychological treatment (McCart et al., The assumption that imagery-based trauma-focused interventions can distort the declarative Analogue studies with healthy samples have shown that imagination may be particularly potent in altering memories. In these studies, three main experimental paradigms have been used to simulate possible therapy-induced biases in autobiographical memory: (1) imagination inflation paradigm, in which participants were asked to repeatedly imagine events that they actually have not experienced or (2) false feedback paradigm, in which participants are given false information (e.g., manipulated photos or videos) indicating that they likely experienced an event or (3) memory implantation paradigm, in which the presumed occurrence of an event that did not happen is supported, for example, by false statements by family members (Brewin & Andrews, Based on these findings from basic memory research, expert witnesses have proposed that imagery-based psychological treatment can have the same effect and can, therefore, result in altered or even false memories that are experienced as genuine experiences (Volbert & Steller, When comparing imagery-based psychological interventions, such as ImRs, with the experimental manipulations used in the basic memory studies described above (Goff & Roediger, Despite the procedural differences described above, it remains unclear whether ImRs can inadvertently affect patients’ factual knowledge and/or voluntary recollection of the original aversive event. So far, only two studies have addressed this issue. Using an aversive film as trauma analogue, both studies found that ImRs did not impair factual knowledge of the film when compared to active (i.e., positive imagery of a personal, pleasant experience) (Hagenaars & Arntz, The main goal of the current study was to use an experimental analogue design to investigate to what extent ImRs changes autobiographic voluntary memory. In contrast to the aforementioned analogue studies testing the effects of ImRs on selected variables assessing voluntary memory as secondary outcomes (Hagenaars & Arntz, Based on the theoretical ideas and empirical findings underlying current legal practice, we hypothesized that ImRs (compared to a no-intervention control) would lead to more false details and less details recalled correctly.