The debate regarding the reality of repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has occurred almost entirely uninformed by data on memory functioning in individuals reporting recovered memories of CSA. The purpose of the proposed research, therefore, is to test hypotheses about memory in women who either 1) report recovering memories of CSA that have been corroborated, 2) report recovering memories of CSA that have not been corroborated, 3) report never having forgotten their abuse, 4) report believing that they harbor repressed memories of abuse, or 5) report never having been exposed to CSA. Proponents of both the recovered memory and false memory perspectives agree that people who report recalling long- forgotten memories of CSA differ cognitively from those who report never having forgotten their abuse. Proponents of the first perspective suggest that people reporting (corroborated) recovered (or repressed) memories of CSA are characterized by impairments in autobiographical memory and by heightened ability to forget disturbing material relative to people reporting continuous abuse memories or no history of abuse. Proponent of the second perspective hold that people reporting (uncorroborated) recovered memories of CSA are characterized by deficits in reality monitoring (ability to distinguish perceived events from imagined events) and by proneness to """"""""recalling"""""""" events that never happened to them. Four laboratory experiments are proposed that test each of these hypotheses, and a fifth study designed to identify individual difference variables (e.g., fantasy proneness, imagery ability) that predict performance in these memory tasks is proposed.
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