The reappearance hypothesis revisited: recurrent involuntary memories after traumatic events and in everyday life.
Abstract
Recurrent involuntary memories are autobiographical memories that come to mind with
no preceding retrieval attempt and that are subjectively experienced as being repetitive.
Clinically, they are classified as a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder. The
present work is the first to systematically examine recurrent involuntary memories
outside clinical settings. Study 1 examines recurrent involuntary memories among survivors
of the tsunami catastrophe in Southeast Asia in 2004. Study 2 examines recurrent involuntary
memories in a large general population. Study 3 examines whether the contents of recurrent
involuntary memories recorded in a diary study are duplicates of, or differ from,
one another. We show that recurrent involuntary memories are not limited to clinical
populations or to emotionally negative experiences; that they typically do not come
to mind in a fixed and unchangeable form; and that they show the same pattern regarding
accessibility as do autobiographical memories in general. We argue that recurrent
involuntary memories after traumas and in everyday life can be explained in terms
of general and well-established mechanisms of autobiographical memory.
Type
Journal articleSubject
AdolescentAdult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Disasters
Emotions
Female
Humans
Male
Mental Recall
Middle Aged
Retention (Psychology)
Retrospective Studies
Sri Lanka
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
Surveys and Questionnaires
Thailand
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
David C. Rubin
Juanita M. Kreps Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
For .pdfs of all publications click here My main research interest has been in
long-term memory, especially for complex (or "real-world") stimuli. This work includes
the study of autobiographical memory and oral tra

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