5: Autobiographical Memory and Anxiety

Question 1

What could help explain contradictory evidence for mood-congruent recall in anxiety?

Answer 1

It is a highly diffuse disorder with variation between specific disorders, which may not be captured by measures which focus on general distress.

Question 2

What is the main motivation for studying autobiographical memory in anxiety?

Answer 2

Clinically anxious people often report recalling personally threatening experiences, especially when feeling anxious.

Question 3

What do people with PTSD and panic disorders show memory bias towards?

Answer 3

Threat

Question 4

Briefly describe Wenzel and Jordan’s methodology?

Answer 4

Participants high in worry, anger and controls were given anxiety, anger and worry cue words and asked to retrieve a memory and rate how pleasant it was.

Question 5

What were the results of Wenzel and Jordan’s study?

Answer 5

No group differences in retrieval latency, specificity or affective tone. Angry and worried participants rated memories less pleasant.

Question 6

What characterises PTSD?

Answer 6

Intrusive recall of aversive memories and attempts to avoid recall of these memories.

Question 7

What are intrusive memories?

Answer 7

Negative, involuntary, spontaneous memories.

Question 8

What is the paradox in PTSD?

Answer 8

People experience intrusive memories but struggle to recall aspects of the traumatic experience on demand, known as dissocciative amnesia.

Question 9

What is episodic memory?

Answer 9

Memory for events.

Question 10

What is personal semantic memory?

Answer 10

Memory for facts about the self.

Question 11

Describe the verbally accessible memory system.

Answer 11

Responsible for conscious encoding of events.

Question 12

What brain area is associated with the VAM?

Answer 12

Hippocampus

Question 13

Describe the situationally accessible memory system.

Answer 13

Sensory information that is encoded perceptually and not consciously processed.

Question 14

What brain area is associated with the SAM?

Answer 14

Amygdala

Question 15

What do emotionally stressful situations enhance?

Answer 15

Encoding of voluntary and involuntary memories.

Question 16

When does involuntary recall occur?

Answer 16

When stimuli or events trigger the recall of a past memory without conscious effort.

Question 17

What is shallow processing?

Answer 17

Encoding in terms of sensory, emotional and perceptual features, causing reduced conceptual processing and contextual integration.

Question 18

What type of processing facilitates involuntary memory?

Answer 18

Shallow processing

Question 19

What type of processing facilitates voluntary memory?

Answer 19

Conceptual processing

Question 20

What were the results of Bertensen and Rubin’s telephone study?

Answer 20

Voluntary memories and emotionally intense events were more frequent but valency did not have an effect.

Question 21

What were the results of Bertensen and Rubin’s traumatic and important events study?

Answer 21

High correlation between the frequencies of voluntary and involuntary memories, slightly more voluntary self-nominated negative events, both memory types correlated with PTSD symptoms and trouble forgetting was more highly associated with PTSD symptoms than trouble remembering.

Question 22

Briefly describe Strokes et al’s methodology.

Answer 22

11 to 16 year old female burn injury victims and control did an emotional cue word recall task, an autobiographical memory inventory, self report questionnaires and verbal intelligence tests.

Question 23

What were the results of Strokes et al’s study for speed and type of recall?

Answer 23

The burn group had slower recall, particularly to negative cues, more overgeneral memories, fewer specific memories, lower scores on semantic and episodic recall and a negative correlation between detail in episodic recall and intrusive burn injury thoughts..

Question 24

What were the results of Strokes et al’s study for pre and post trauma recall?

Answer 24

No group differences in pre trauma recall but burn group gave less events unrelated to burn injury in post trauma recall.

Question 25

What brain area and memory process help explain intrusions?

Answer 25

During SAM the amygdala is activated causing a fear response.

Question 26

What aspect of rumination helps explain poor memory for some aspects of trauma?

Answer 26

Only some parts of trauma are retrieved and rehearsed meaning some parts are inhibited.

Question 27

What are the results of a study on vantage points in PTSD?

Answer 27

Trauma symptoms found to be worse initially and at 12 months if the observer field perspective was chosen initially.