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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Autobiographical Memories in Everyday Life

Evidence from self-reports and laboratory studies suggests that recall of nontrauma autobiographical memories may be disturbed in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but investigations in everyday life are sparse. This study investigated unintentional nontrauma and trauma memories in trauma surviv...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Schönfeld, Sabine, Ehlers, Anke
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5528199/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28781928
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2167702616688878
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author Schönfeld, Sabine
Ehlers, Anke
author_facet Schönfeld, Sabine
Ehlers, Anke
author_sort Schönfeld, Sabine
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description Evidence from self-reports and laboratory studies suggests that recall of nontrauma autobiographical memories may be disturbed in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but investigations in everyday life are sparse. This study investigated unintentional nontrauma and trauma memories in trauma survivors with and without PTSD (N = 52), who kept an autobiographical memory diary for a week. We investigated whether unintentional nontrauma memories show an overgeneral memory bias and further memory abnormalities in people with PTSD, and whether unintentional trauma memories show distinct features. Compared to the no-PTSD group, the PTSD group recorded fewer nontrauma memories, which were more overgeneral, more often from before the trauma or related to the trauma, were perceived as distant, and led to greater dwelling. Trauma memories were more vivid, recurrent, and present and led to greater suppression and dwelling. Within the PTSD group, the same features distinguished trauma and nontrauma memories. Results are discussed regarding theories of autobiographical memory and PTSD.
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spelling pubmed-55281992017-08-02 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Autobiographical Memories in Everyday Life Schönfeld, Sabine Ehlers, Anke Clin Psychol Sci Empirical Articles Evidence from self-reports and laboratory studies suggests that recall of nontrauma autobiographical memories may be disturbed in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but investigations in everyday life are sparse. This study investigated unintentional nontrauma and trauma memories in trauma survivors with and without PTSD (N = 52), who kept an autobiographical memory diary for a week. We investigated whether unintentional nontrauma memories show an overgeneral memory bias and further memory abnormalities in people with PTSD, and whether unintentional trauma memories show distinct features. Compared to the no-PTSD group, the PTSD group recorded fewer nontrauma memories, which were more overgeneral, more often from before the trauma or related to the trauma, were perceived as distant, and led to greater dwelling. Trauma memories were more vivid, recurrent, and present and led to greater suppression and dwelling. Within the PTSD group, the same features distinguished trauma and nontrauma memories. Results are discussed regarding theories of autobiographical memory and PTSD. SAGE Publications 2017-03-13 2017-03 /pmc/articles/PMC5528199/ /pubmed/28781928 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2167702616688878 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Empirical Articles
Schönfeld, Sabine
Ehlers, Anke
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Autobiographical Memories in Everyday Life
title Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Autobiographical Memories in Everyday Life
title_full Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Autobiographical Memories in Everyday Life
title_fullStr Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Autobiographical Memories in Everyday Life
title_full_unstemmed Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Autobiographical Memories in Everyday Life
title_short Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Autobiographical Memories in Everyday Life
title_sort posttraumatic stress disorder and autobiographical memories in everyday life
topic Empirical Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5528199/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28781928
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2167702616688878
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