Memory performance among women with parental abuse histories: Enhanced directed forgetting or directed remembering?

Abstract

Performance on a directed forgetting task was assessed in 24 individuals with borderline personality disorder and early life parental abuse, 24 borderline individuals with no history of abuse, and 24 healthy nonclinical controls under conditions of explicit and implicit memory. In the explicit memory condition, individuals with abuse histories showed greater differential recall of "to-be-remembered" versus "to-be-forgotten" material compared to the 2 comparison groups. Implicit memory performance was equivalent for all 3 groups. The enhanced selective memory in the abused group was the result of better recall for "remember" and not poorer recall for "forget" information, indicating that abused individuals have an enhanced ability to sustain attention to designated "remember" information. Because most people with childhood abuse recall their abuse, enhanced remembering of designated events (e.g., information not associated with abuse) may be a coping strategy.

Neurophysiological correlates of increased verbal working memory in high-dissociative participants: a functional MRI study

“…Words that are, for instance, kept active longer in working memory are generally encoded more strongly in episodic memory (e.g. Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1981), which also offers a potential explanation for the findings of enhanced memory performance by high dissociators (Cloitre et al 1996 ;McNally et al 1998McNally et al , 2001Elzinga et al 2000). Only with 'alter' changes clear episodic memory deficits have been obtained in dissociative patients (Eich et al 1997 ;Elzinga et al 2003).…”

“…In contrast, there are also indications, at least in some conditions, of enhanced memory performance in patients with highly dissociative tendencies (Cloitre et al 1996 ;McNally et al 1998McNally et al , 2001Elzinga et al 2000). This form of 'hypermnesia ' has, however, only been observed when encoding and retrieval take place in the same personality state.…”

The state of betrayal trauma theory: Reply to McNally—Conceptual issues, and future directions

“…Of course, there is no reason to expect that it should necessarily be observed in the lab; rather, specific conditions under which forgetting occurs must be identified and tested. Reduced recall seems much less likely to occur in the lab under several conditions: presence of an anxiety (i.e., PTSD; McNally, Metzger, Lasko, Clancy, & Pitman, 1998) or personality disorder (e.g., Cloitre, Cancienne, Brodsky, Dulit, & Perry, 1996), and selective attention conditions (McNally et al, 1998). Several studies point to dissociative processes as candidate mechanisms for apparent amnesia in the lab (e.g., Moulds & Bryant, 2005), while also suggesting that high levels of anxiety are not likely to be associated with the phenomenon.…”

Directed forgetting between, but not within, dissociative personality states.

“…The directed-forgetting task has been used as a method to assess whether traumatized patients engage in selective forgetting of trauma-related information (see Cloitre, Cancienne, Brodsky, Dulit, & Perry, 1996;Korfine & Hooley, 2000;McNally, Clancy, & Schacter, 2001;McNally, Metzger, Lasko, Clancy, & Pitman, 1998). If traumatized individuals are more skilled in avoiding the encoding and/or retrieval of threatening information, one would expect a more pronounced forgetting of negative or threatening words.…”