5: Autobiographical Memory and Anxiety Flashcards
What could help explain contradictory evidence for mood-congruent recall in anxiety?
It is a highly diffuse disorder with variation between specific disorders, which may not be captured by measures which focus on general distress.
What is the main motivation for studying autobiographical memory in anxiety?
Clinically anxious people often report recalling personally threatening experiences, especially when feeling anxious.
What do people with PTSD and panic disorders show memory bias towards?
Threat
Briefly describe Wenzel and Jordan’s methodology?
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.
What were the results of Wenzel and Jordan’s study?
No group differences in retrieval latency, specificity or affective tone. Angry and worried participants rated memories less pleasant.
What characterises PTSD?
Intrusive recall of aversive memories and attempts to avoid recall of these memories.
What are intrusive memories?
Negative, involuntary, spontaneous memories.
What is the paradox in PTSD?
People experience intrusive memories but struggle to recall aspects of the traumatic experience on demand, known as dissocciative amnesia.
What is episodic memory?
Memory for events.
What is personal semantic memory?
Memory for facts about the self.
Describe the verbally accessible memory system.
Responsible for conscious encoding of events.
What brain area is associated with the VAM?
Hippocampus
Describe the situationally accessible memory system.
Sensory information that is encoded perceptually and not consciously processed.
What brain area is associated with the SAM?
Amygdala
What do emotionally stressful situations enhance?
Encoding of voluntary and involuntary memories.
When does involuntary recall occur?
When stimuli or events trigger the recall of a past memory without conscious effort.
What is shallow processing?
Encoding in terms of sensory, emotional and perceptual features, causing reduced conceptual processing and contextual integration.
What type of processing facilitates involuntary memory?
Shallow processing
What type of processing facilitates voluntary memory?
Conceptual processing
What were the results of Bertensen and Rubin’s telephone study?
Voluntary memories and emotionally intense events were more frequent but valency did not have an effect.
What were the results of Bertensen and Rubin’s traumatic and important events study?
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.
Briefly describe Strokes et al’s methodology.
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.
What were the results of Strokes et al’s study for speed and type of recall?
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..
What were the results of Strokes et al’s study for pre and post trauma recall?
No group differences in pre trauma recall but burn group gave less events unrelated to burn injury in post trauma recall.
What brain area and memory process help explain intrusions?
During SAM the amygdala is activated causing a fear response.
What aspect of rumination helps explain poor memory for some aspects of trauma?
Only some parts of trauma are retrieved and rehearsed meaning some parts are inhibited.
What are the results of a study on vantage points in PTSD?
Trauma symptoms found to be worse initially and at 12 months if the observer field perspective was chosen initially.
