Can purely psychological trauma lead to a complete blockage of autobiographical memories? This long-standing question about the existence of repressed memories has been at the heart of one of the most heated debates in modern psychology. These so-called memory wars originated in the 1990s, and many scholars have assumed that they are over. We demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect and that the controversial issue of repressed memories is alive and well and may even be on the rise. We review converging research and data from legal cases indicating that the topic of repressed memories remains active in clinical, legal, and academic settings. We show that the belief in repressed memories occurs on a nontrivial scale (58%) and appears to have increased among clinical psychologists since the 1990s. We also demonstrate that the scientifically controversial concept of dissociative amnesia, which we argue is a substitute term for memory repression, has gained in popularity. Finally, we review work on the adverse side effects of certain psychotherapeutic techniques, some of which may be linked to the recovery of repressed memories. The memory wars have not vanished. They have continued to endure and contribute to potentially damaging consequences in clinical, legal, and academic contexts.

This study examined the efficacy of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and exposure in the treatment of a specific phobia. Twenty-six spider phobic children were treated during 2 treatment phases. During the first phase, which lasted 2.5 hr, children were randomly assigned to either (a) an EMDR group (n = 9), (b) an exposure in vivo group (n = 9), or (c) a computerized exposure (control) group (n = 8). During the 2nd phase, all groups received a 1.5-hr session of exposure in vivo. Therapy outcome measures (i.e., self-reported fear and behavioral avoidance) were obtained before treatment, after Treatment Phase 1, and after Treatment Phase 2. Results showed that the 2.5-hr exposure in vivo session produced significant improvement on all outcome measures. In contrast, EMDR yielded a significant improvement on only self-reported spider fear. Computerized exposure produced nonsignificant improvement. Furthermore, no evidence was found to suggest that EMDR potentiates the efficacy of a subsequent exposure in vivo treatment. Exposure in vivo remains the treatment of choice for childhood spider phobia.

We conducted three studies that address the residual effects of instructed feigning of symptoms. In Experiment 1 (N = 31), undergraduates instructed to exaggerate symptoms on a malingering test continued to report more neurocognitive and psychiatric symptoms than did nonmalingering controls, when later asked to respond honestly to the same test. In Experiment 2 (N = 28), students completed a symptom list of psychiatric complaints and then were asked to explain why they had endorsed two target symptoms that they did not, in actuality, endorse. A total of 57% of participants did not detect this mismatch between actual and manipulated symptom endorsement and even tended to adopt the manipulated symptoms when provided with an opportunity to do so. In Experiment 3 (N = 28), we found that self-deceptive enhancement is related to the tendency to continue to report neurocognitive and psychiatric symptoms that initially had been produced intentionally. "Blindness" for the intentional aspect of symptom endorsement may explain the intrinsic overlap between feigning and somatoform complaints.

This article describes a first attempt to investigate the reliability and validity of the TOM test, a new instrument for assessing theory of mind ability in normal children and children with pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs). In Study 1, TOM test scores of normal children (n = 70) correlated positively with their performance on other theory of mind tasks. Furthermore, young children only succeeded on TOM items that tap the basic domains of theory of mind (e.g., emotion recognition), whereas older children also passed items that measure the more mature areas of theory of mind (e.g., understanding of humor, understanding of second-order beliefs). Taken together, the findings of Study 1 suggest that the TOM test is a valid measure. Study 2 showed for a separate sample of normal children (n = 12) that the TOM test possesses sufficient test-retest stability. Study 3 demonstrated for a sample of children with PDDs (n = 10) that the interrater reliability of the TOM test is good. Study 4 found that children with PDDs (n = 20) had significantly lower TOM test scores than children with other psychiatric disorders (e.g., children with Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; n = 32), a finding that underlines the discriminant validity of the TOM test. Furthermore, Study 4 showed that intelligence as indexed by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children was positively associated with TOM test scores. Finally, in all studies, the TOM test was found to be reliable in terms of internal consistency. Altogether, results indicate that the TOM test is a reliable and valid instrument that can be employed to measure various aspects of theory of mind.

Imagination inflation refers to the phenomenon that imagining a low probability childhood event promotes subjective confidence that the event actually happened. The present article describes two studies that addressed the issue of whether imagination inflation is related to certain personality characteristics (i.e. social desirability, imagery ability, and dissociation). In Study 1, students (N 34) rated the probability of 60 childhood events. Four weeks later, they came to the laboratory and were asked to imagine four low-probability childhood events. Next, new confidence ratings of target (i.e. imagined) and control items were collected. Students also completed measures of social desirability, imagery ability, and dissociation. While a higher percentage of increased confidence ratings was found for target items than for control items, the size of this imagination inflation effect was modest. Only imagery ability was found to be related to imagination inflation in that individuals with better imagery abilities displayed a larger imagination inflation effect. The procedure of Study 2 (N 45) closely followed that of Study 1, except that imagination of target items now had to be written down. Writing about a fictitious event generated a straightforward imagination inflation phenomenon, but this was not related to any of the personality characteristics. The discussion focuses on the extent to which imagination inflation may model therapy-induced false memories.