Overgeneral autobiographical memory and traumatic events: An evaluative review.

Abstract

Does trauma exposure impair retrieval of autobiographical memories? Many theorists have suggested that the reduced ability to access specific memories of life events, termed overgenerality, is a protective mechanism helping attenuate painful emotions associated with trauma. The authors addressed this question by reviewing 24 studies that assessed trauma exposure and overgenerality, examining samples with posttraumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder, depression, traumatic event exposure, and other clinical disorders. Limitations are discussed, including variations in assessment of events, depression, and overgenerality and the need for additional comparison groups. Across studies, there was no consistent association between trauma exposure and overgenerality, suggesting that trauma exposure is unlikely to be the primary mechanism leading to overgenerality. Instead, psychopathology factors such as depression and posttraumatic stress appear to be more consistently associated with overgenerality. Alternative overgenerality theories may help identify key overgenerality mechanisms, improving current understanding of autobiographical memory processes underlying psychopathology.

Stuck in the past: negative bias, explanatory style, temporal order, and evaluative perspectives in life narratives of clinically depressed individuals

“…Van Vreeswijk and de Wilde, 2004;Williams and Broadbent, 1986]. One hypothesis to explain the overgeneral memory effect is that specific memories are avoided because of their negative emotional quality [Moore and Zoellner, 2007;Williams, 1996]. Possibly the two task conditions have different effects on the avoidance of negative memories.…”

Imagining the future in Complicated Grief

“…[6][7][8] A similar pattern of retrieval has been observed in individuals with depression, suicidal ideation, and PTSD. In individuals with suicidal ideation, the deficit has been linked to deficits in key areas of future-related cognitive functioning (for review see [9,10] ). For example, Williams et al [11] presented overdose patients with an autobiographical memory task and a future imaginings task.…”

Culture and the Remembering of Trauma

“…The first two questions pertain to global aspects of autobiographical remembering. First, as outlined above, difficulties in providing specific memories has been found to be associated with, and predictive of, PTSD (Moore & Zoellner, 2007). Research has demonstrated that specific autobiographical memories of personal unique experiences are emphasized in individualistic cultures as they function to differentiate the self from others and thus, contribute to the independent self-construal (Jobson, 2009b;Ross & Wang, 2010;Wang, 2001;Wang, 2009;Wang & Conway, 2004).…”

“…Instead PTSD sufferers tend to retrieve categoric overgeneral memories (OGM) (i.e. memories for collections of events) (see Moore & Zoellner, 2007;Williams et al, 2007). Another example of a global autobiographical memory difficulty relates to memories of experiences that significantly reflect and inform one's identity.…”