The effects of trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the emotion-induced memory trade-off

Abstract

Many past examinations of memory changes in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have focused on changes in memory for trauma. However, it is unclear if these mnemonic differences extend beyond the memory of the trauma to memory for other positive and negative information and if they are specific to individuals with PTSD or extend to other individuals who have experienced trauma. The present study examined the influences of trauma exposure and PTSD on an effect that may parallel tunnel memory in PTSD: the emotion-induced memory trade-off, whereby emotional aspects of an experience are remembered at the expense of the nonemotional context. Three groups of participants (25 with current PTSD, 27 who had experienced trauma but did not have current PTSD, and 25 controls who had neither experienced significant trauma nor met criteria for current PTSD) were shown complex visual scenes that included an item (positive, negative, or neutral) placed on a neutral background. Forty-five minutes later, participants underwent a recognition memory test for the items and backgrounds separately. An emotion-induced memory trade-off was said to occur when there was a significant difference in item and background memory for emotional scenes, but not for neutral scenes. Results indicated that people with PTSD, like the other groups, were more likely to remember positive and negative items than neutral items. Moreover, people with PTSD exhibited a memory trade-off comparable in magnitude to that exhibited by the non-trauma control group. In contrast, trauma-exposed people without a current diagnosis of PTSD did not show a trade-off, because they remembered items within scenes better than their accompanying contexts not only for emotional but also for neutral scenes. These results suggest that (1) the effect of emotion on memory for visual scenes is similar in people with PTSD and control participants, and (2) people who have experienced trauma, but do not have PTSD, may have a different way of attending to and remembering visual scenes, exhibiting less of a memory trade-off than either control participants or people with PTSD.

Emotional Memory in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic PRISMA Review of Controlled Studies

“…Among studies involving tasks with picture stimuli: five studies used a recognition memory task (Chemtob et al, 1999 ; Whalley et al, 2009 ; Brohawn et al, 2010 ; Mickley Steinmetz et al, 2012 ; Patel et al, 2016 ); one study used a recognition memory task after an oddball task (Guillery-Girard et al, 2013 ); one study used an item-method directed forgetting task (Baumann et al, 2013 ); and another study used a delayed memory free recall test (Nicholson et al, 2014 ).…”

Right temporal cortical hypertrophy in resilience to trauma: an MRI study

“…Several studies implicate semantic processing in PTSD (Pineles, Shipherd, Welch, & Yovel, 2007 ; McNally et al, 1990 ; Weber, 2008 ). One study in particular observed that TE, PTSD-negative participants showed less emotion-induced memory trade-off for emotional items in a memory task, compared to both PTSD-positive and non-TE participants, indicating an emotional semantic encoding resilience factor (Mickley Steinmetz et al, 2012 ). Memory processes were also implicated in an fMRI study by Geuze Vermetten, Ruf, De Kloet, and Westenberg ( 2008 ).…”

Eye for Detail: Local versus Global Visual Processing Style Predicts the Development of Re-experiencing after Analogue Trauma

“…The local-global task (or "Navon task") can be administered in two ways, assessing either divided or focused attention/inhibition (Fink, et al, 1996). We used the latter version because attention narrowing and impaired inhibition are considered important predictive factors in threat processing and PTSD development (Easterbrook, 1959;Janovic & Ressler, 2010;Mickley Steinmetz, Scott, Smith & Kensinger, 2012).…”