Controversy: Repression     1

Controversy: Repression or Forgetting of Child Sexual Abuse

Terri Proctor

Middle Tennessee State University

Psychology 4040

Controversy: Repression     2

Controversy: Repression or Forgetting of Child Sexual Abuse

            This paper will briefly explore four different points of view regarding the encoding and retrieval of memories of child sexual abuse (CSA). Some researchers believe that lack of memory occurs at the level of encoding (DePrince & Freyd, 2004). They support the idea that children who are molested by caretakers will use dissociation to cope during abusive events and that this avoidance behavior has a strong impact on the childÕs ability to recall the abuse even after many years. Other researchers believe that incest survivors do not forget incidents of abuse and do not have extraordinary ability to disengage attention or inhibit recall of traumatic events. Instead, their memories are detailed and salient (McNally, Ristuccia, & Perlman, 2005). Still, others believe that there are some inhibitory control mechanisms which are similar to executive control processes that enable memories to stay out of a personÕs awareness after they are encoded; thereby, supporting a model of repression (Anderson & Green, 2001). Lastly, there are some researchers who question if and how people really forget. Joslyn, Loftus, McNoughton, and Powers (2001) asked, ÒHow well do people remember previous remembering and forgetting?Ó (p. 789). The authors put it another way, ÒWhen people have remembered correctly in the past, do they now remember having been correct? Likewise, when memory failed them in the past, do they remember that?Ó (Joslyn et al., 2001, p. 790).

            In 2004, DePrince & Freyd published research findings in support of FreydÕs Betrayal Trauma Theory (Freyd, 1994). This theory proposes that when a child is sexually molested by a parent or caretaker, amnesia is used as a coping mechanism. Because a child is dependent upon his caretaker for everyday survival needs, amnesia allows the child to maintain a relationship with their caretaker. According to Freyd, a child must Òblock outÓ the incident perpetrated by the caretaker. In their study, DePrince and Freyd (2004) referred to this Òblocking outÓ as dissociation which they defined as Òthe breakdown of normally connected processes of

Controversy: Repression     3

consciousness and memoryÓ (p. 488). They stated that dissociation occurs when a child feels that their sense of attachment to the caregiver is in jeopardy. Because their physical survival depends on this attachment, children cope during the actual abusive event by trying to consciously ignore it and mentally escaping it by thinking about something else.

            DePrince and FreydÕs (2004) study was conducted using college students. Participants completed a directed-forgetting task under selective-attention and divided-attention conditions. The task included blocks of trauma-related words and blocks of neutral words. In some instances, participants were told to remember certain blocks of words, while in other instances, they were told to forget certain blocks of words. At the same time, words in the selective-attention condition were presented in the same color while words in the divided-attention condition changed colors. The participants were told to press a button when they noticed that the colors changed. In order to reduce primacy and recency effects, a block of names of different countries was presented at the beginning and again at the end of the task. At the end of the experiment, participants were asked to recall as many words as they could regardless of previous instructions to remember or forget. Then they completed a recognition test which included the words that were presented in both conditions as well as a list of words that were never presented. Finally, participants completed the Brief Betrayal Trauma Survey, BBTS (Goldberg & Freyd, 2003, as cited in DePrince & Freyd, 2004) and the Dissociative Experiences Scale, DES (Bernstein & Putnam, 1986, as cited in DePrince & Freyd, 2004) in order to group them into low-scoring dissociators and high-scoring dissociators.

            Results showed that high dissociators recalled fewer trauma-related words and more neutral words than low dissociators in the words-to-be remembered task under the divided-attention condition. Likewise, in the words-to-be forgotten task, high dissociators recalled more neutral words and fewer trauma words than low dissociators under the divided-attention

Controversy: Repression     4

condition. In addition, high dissociators scored higher on the DES and had more self-reported, high betrayal events on the BBTS than low dissociators. However, no interactions were found Òbetween dissociation group and [the intermittent] remember-forget instruction, suggesting that inhibitory mechanisms did not play a role in the high dissociatorsÕ memory impairment for trauma-related versus neutral informationÓ (p. 491). They concluded that because participants did not encode traumatic words in the intermittent divided-attention condition, the prediction that high dissociators will avoid processing traumatic events only in certain attention conditions was supported. Conversely, an interaction was found between the block of to-be-remembered words and the dissociation group. They indicated that this effect took place at the initial encoding stage (p. 491). DePrince and Freyd suggested that their results supported the betrayal trauma theoryÕs prediction that Òindividuals who experience events high in betrayal will use dissociation to keep threatening information from awarenessÓ (p. 491).

            In 2005, McNally, Ristuccia, & Perlman criticized DePrince and FreydÕs (2004) study stating that it was limited by the fact that the sample of college students, who may or may not have experienced continuous or recovered memories of CSA, were not a good representation of the general public. They also found fault with the fact that the self-reported histories of betrayal events were not corroborated. Not only were they not confirmed, but most of the self-reported abuse was inflicted by someone other than a caretaker. In addition, participants were divided into two groups of low or high dissociators and then sub-divided into three groups based again on their self-report of high, medium, or low betrayal events. McNally et al. (2005) strongly criticized these research findings saying that they Òprovided no evidence that they [the participants] had ever forgotten their abuse, and having forgotten oneÕs abuse is precisely what betrayal trauma theory is designed to explainÓ (p. 337). In other words, FreydÕs 2004 research design did not accurately test her own theory. 

Controversy: Repression     5

            As a result of these confounding variables, McNally et al. (2005) replicated DePrince and FreydÕs (2004) experiment. Their replication was different in that their participants consisted of adult survivors of CSA, some of whom had been abused by caretakers. Participants were divided into three groups. The continuous-memory group consisted of those who had never forgotten the abuse; the recovered-memory group contained those who recalled abuse after many years; and the control group was comprised of adults who had never been abused as children. It was predicted that if participants have forgotten abusive events and then recovered the memory, they should show evidence of memory impairment in a trauma-related word task under a divided-attention condition. Also, it was predicted that participants in the continuous-memory and control groups would show little or no evidence of memory impairment for trauma words.

            Results showed that more trauma words were recalled than neutral words by all three groups, unlike DePrince and FreydÕs findings of higher recall of trauma words by high dissociators only. In addition, the recovered-memory group did not forget the trauma words that they were told to remember under the divided-attention condition. This does not mirror DePrince and FreydÕs findings that high dissociators recalled more neutral words than trauma words in the words to-be-forgotten task under divided-attention. McNally et al. (2005) argued that their results indicated that trauma words were salient to survivors of CSA because recall of trauma words was higher than recall of neutral words in both selective and divided-attention conditions. Furthermore, McNally et al. (2005) stated that their findings paralleled previous research by Russell (1986; 1999, as cited in McNally et al., 2005) in that none of the incest victims in his study ever forgot the sexual abuse.

            While DePrince and Freyd (2004) inferred that attention and memory problems occurred at initial encoding, and McNally et al. (2005) argued that there was no evidence for memory impairment, Anderson and Green (2001) hypothesized that inhibitory control mechanisms

Controversy: Repression     6

would be at work after encoding to keep traumatic memories out of a personÕs awareness. Their premise was that these inhibitory mechanisms make it more difficult to retrieve traumatic memories. According to their reasoning, executive control processes that operate when a person is focusing on an object or activity to the exclusion of surrounding stimuli, or when a person is able to overcome interference during a memory task, or when a person is able to inhibit a natural response to something, then they may be using the same cognitive mechanisms that also disallow a traumatic memory from entering their awareness. Furthermore, not only does it not enter the personÕs awareness, but the more times they disallow or reject the memory, the less likely they will be able to recall the memory at a later time. Should they recall the memory after repeated inhibitions, the memory will most likely be an inaccurate one.

            In order to test their hypothesis that impaired memory is due to suppression, Anderson and Green gave participants unrelated pairs of words to learn. They were informed as to which pairs would be considered suppression words so that during the task they could easily recognize them as suppression words. They were then tested in a think/no-think task in which one of the paired words (the cue) was flashed on a screen and they were instructed to either think about the word that matched it and say it out loud, or they were instructed to not-think about the matching word. During the no-think time, participants were instructed to focus on the screen the entire time in order to help eliminate diversionary thoughts. To evaluate if suppression would interfere with retrieval, participants were later asked to recall the matching word for every cue word regardless if it was initially a think or a no-think word.

            Anderson and Green predicted that if a memory did not enter a personÕs awareness due to inhibitory mechanisms, then the number of recalled no-think words would be lower than the number of words recalled in the baseline condition which was administered prior to the think/no-

 

Controversy: Repression     7    

think task. In other words, retrieval of the no-think words would be more difficult than the retrieval of the baseline words.

            To evaluate if the number of times a person suppresses a memory from awareness would have an effect on retrieval, Anderson and Green repeatedly tested participants 0, 1, 8, or 16 times using the think/no-think task. Their prediction was that if memory is suppressed from awareness by repeated activation of inhibitory mechanisms, then the recall of matching words would be worse after 16 trials.

            In order to rule out associative interference and unlearning, which says that forgetting occurs only when the original cue is used, Anderson and Green also tested participants by asking them to recall the matching word when given a different cue. The cue consisted of the first letter of the matching word and its semantic category. They predicted that the number of words retrieved in this condition would be lower than baseline level indicating that inhibitory mechanisms were at work.

            To substantiate that the participants were not affected by initial instructions to memorize which word pairs were no-think words, and to make sure that participants were not withholding words that they really did recall when they were instructed to suppress them, Anderson and Green administered a recall test in which participants were asked to respond to every cue word regardless of previous instructions to think or not think. As an incentive to remember, they were given 25 cents for every correct response. They were also given a false hypothesis in case they had figured out the experiment.

            Anderson and Green found that no-think words were remembered less often than the

baseline words, and that recall for the think words improved with repetition, suggesting that suppression may be due to an executive control process. Results also showed that in the

associative interference and unlearning task, recall of the no-think words was lower than the

Controversy: Repression     8

baseline level indicating that regardless of the cue, forgetting was the same, and was not due to  Òdiversionary thoughtsÓ (p. 368) in working memory. In addition, repetitive testing resulted in higher memory impairment which was thought to have been induced by more avoidance. The results of the final exhaustive word recall experiment were consistent with the previous one in that impairment was significant. In part, Anderson and GreenÕs hypothesis bears some resemblance to DePrince and FreydÕs (2004) Betrayal Trauma Theory in that the executive control process is functioning to keep the traumatic memory out of the personÕs awareness in the same way that amnesia due to dissociation keeps harmful information out of a personÕs awareness. Similarly, both processes are maintained over prolonged periods whether by repetitive inhibition or by amnesia.    

            Overall, Anderson and Green believed that their hypothesis was supported and suggested that their research findings may support a model for voluntary repression which they referred to as suppression. They indicated that results provided evidence for the working of an executive control process in the suppression of unwanted memories away from awareness. Repeated suppression ultimately affected retrieval and accuracy of the memory.  

            Contrary to Anderson and GreenÕs (2001) repression theory, Joslyn, Loftus, McNoughton, and Powers (2001) study focused on Òthe ability to remember past forgettingÓ (p. 789). They questioned if a personÕs strategy for memory could be inadequate? Is it possible for a person to forget that they had previously remembered something? Or, Òwhen people have remembered correctly in the past, do they now remember having been correct?Ó (p. 790). Joslyn and her colleagues criticized self-reported evaluations of ability to remember, such as DePrince and FreydÕs (2004), because their findings were not consistent with some of the experimental memory test findings. In order to address this criticism and answer the above questions, Joslyn

 

Controversy: Repression     9   

et al. (2001) studied 54 college students in order to gain a better understanding of memory and its effect on autobiographical memories.

            The 2001 study proposed that retrospective metamemory is a better method of assessing Òthe ability to evaluate oneÕs own memory capacitiesÓ (p. 789) as they relate to past events rather than the method of trying to Òpredict future memory performanceÓ (p. 789). Joslyn et al. (2001) retrospective metamemory model was comprised of two types of judgments: matching and accuracy judgments. The authors explained the model by using the example of remembering whether an answer on a test is remembered accurately at a later date. The process begins with retrieval of the memory of taking the test. The person then relies upon this explicit memory in order to make a judgment as to whether or not they remember the answer. For example, if a person was asked, ÒWhat is recency effect?Ó, he would use cues to search his memory in order to remember answering the question on the test the first time. This recall then cues retrospective metamemory. The personÕs ability to answer the question correctly the second time is dependent upon whether or not his current answer matches his answer from the first time. If it does, it is called a matching judgment. Next, the person must decide if the answer is the correct answer. This is called an accuracy judgment. In order for retrospective metamemory to be explicit, it must include both of these types of judgments.

            In their study, Joslyn et al. (2001) recognized that retrospective metamemory may be affected by several variables. First of all, Òsuccessful remembering might be more memorableÓ (p. 791) than memory failure due to rehearsal of the original answers, due to the fact that success was regarded as a Òpositive experienceÓ (p. 791), or due to overconfidence in a personÕs ability to remember. The second variable that might affect retrospective metamemory was that present memory performance may or may not be an accurate cue for retrieval. Just because someone remembers the answer correctly in the present doesnÕt mean that they remembered it correctly in

Controversy: Repression     10

the past. Or, someone who currently does not remember an answer may think that they also didnÕt remember it previously. Thirdly, certain types of information may be easier to retrieve than other types. Joslyn et al. (2001) proposed that autobiographical events are easier to remember than factual information that is learned from reading.          

            In order to control for these variables, a three-part experiment was conducted. In Phase 1 of the study, participants read about eight different topics that had been selected due to their uncommon nature. In Phase 2, they were asked 30 questions relative to the content of the reading material (text) or relative to the experience of the experiment (events) (i.e., how many people were in the room with you?). At Phase 3, six weeks later, participants were asked the same exact questions as Phase 2, except this time they were also asked if they remembered the answer at Phase 2. Then they were told the correct answer to the question, and then they were asked again if they remembered the answer at Phase 2.

            It was hypothesized that participantsÕ accuracy would be higher for remembering memory successes than for remembering memory failures. The researchers also hypothesized that participants who remembered answers the second time would say that they also remembered them the first time, regardless of context—text or event.

            Results revealed that, as predicted, participants recalled memory successes more often than memory failures. However, participants tended to make inferences and overestimate their ability to remember. In cases where there was extremely high accuracy, it was noted that not all accurate answers were indicative of explicit memory. This is because participants were instructed to make a guess instead of saying they didnÕt know an answer. Therefore, chance alone was at 50 percent. The researchers also noted that recalling past memory failures was harder than recalling successes. It was possible that participants may have been biased to say that they remembered the answer correctly in Phase 3 because they didnÕt actually know yet that they

Controversy: Repression     11

gave the wrong answer in Phase 2. Or, the reverse may have happened. Because participants had a hard time answering the question in Phase 3, they thought that they also got it wrong in Phase 2. This was evidenced by the nearly one-third correct text and event answers that were remembered as failures.

            Joslyn et al. (2001) concluded that their findings indicate that people do not always Òremember past memory performanceÓ (p. 795) with accuracy. In other words, some people may Òremember an event in the present and believe that it was forgotten in the past when in fact it was notÓ (p. 795). For example, a person may remember a traumatic event in therapy for the first time. But when friends and family are questioned, they reveal that the person had talked about the event before, indicating that the memory had been retrievable all along. Joslyn et al. (2001)

finding that memory of past performance was not always accurate is similar, in part, to Anderson and GreenÕs (2001) finding that the more a participant used avoidance, the more likely the recalled memory would be inaccurate. 

            Joslyn et al. (2001) criticized the repression model because it used self-reported analysis, could not always be corroborated, omitted the possibility that a person may forget that they had previously remembered something, and that recall is not always accurate. The findings of Joslyn and her fellow researchers supported the fact that Òmemory for memoryÓ can be inaccurate and that some self-reported forgetting was never really forgotten at all.

            After reviewing these four different views of attention and memory processes, I am left with some questions of my own. Pertaining to DePrince and FreydÕs (2004) study, if certain traumatic event are not encoded at all, then how does a person account for remembering it later? This is an obvious oversight if that is indeed what they are proposing. Also, if the event is partially encoded, say, perhaps due to dissociation, then just how accurate and reliable is the recall if there is not an explicit memory associated with it? It seems obvious that errors would be

Controversy: Repression     12

made in recall if only some of the details were encoded. Joslyn et al. (2001) response to this is that it is possible to forget that you actually remembered, as evidenced in their study.

            In addition, FreydÕs Brief Betrayal Trauma Survey (1994) appears to leave too much of the unknown open to subjectivity. In other words, a personÕs recalled memory cannot actually be measured in and of itself. It can only be corroborated, and even then all the details may never be fully known. More importantly, the exact time of the first-time remembrance of the abuse is not easy to verify and may always remain questionable. My main criticism of DePrince and FreydÕs (2004) study is that they did not use participants who were actual survivors of child sexual abuse or who were abused by a caretaker. Therefore, it is impossible to generalize their findings to child abuse survivors. However, McNally et al. (2005) did replicate DePrince and FreydÕs (2004) study using child abuse survivors who had continuous or recovered memories of abuse. Their findings found no significant difference in the number of recalled trauma words between the two groups including the control group. In fact, the recovered-memory group did not forget the trauma words that they were instructed to remember in the divided-attention condition. Instead, the trauma words appeared salient. This replication refutes DePrince and FreydÕs findings of the difference between high and low dissociatorsÕ recall of trauma words.   

            In Anderson and GreenÕs (2001) experiment, it seems that the possibility that a participant really recalled a word that they were supposed to suppress and then didnÕt report it is not accounted for as a confounding variable. Even though the researchers gave a free recall of all of the words at the end, regardless of the respond or suppress category, it doesnÕt measure the fact that participants may have initially withheld the word, either intentionally or unintentionally. Ironically, perhaps, this research flaw supports Joslyn et al. (2001) finding that it is possible to forget that you remembered.

           

Controversy: Repression     13

            Overall, I think Joslyn et al. (2001) study was the most thorough in testing attention and memory processes as they relate to encoding and retrieval of traumatic memories. Their study comprehensively took into account the variables that may have affected outcomes, and they developed an experiment to control for these confounding variables. The study did not rely upon CSA survivors as participants, did not rely on the subjectivity of self-report, did not require corroboration, did not limit recall to one type of information, and did not rely solely on either present memory or successful memory retrievals. Their careful research design and subsequent results strongly indicated that memory was not always accurate or reliable. Findings showed that sometimes people overestimated their ability for accuracy; sometimes they overestimated their memory failures; sometimes their memories were just not accurate; and sometimes people forgot that they had actually remembered something at a previous time. To state it simply, sometimes people think they are right more often than they are; sometimes people tend to second-guess correct answers; and sometimes people forget that they remembered what they had previously remembered. Implications of this study should be taken seriously by clinicians, law enforcement, and the legal system.

Controversy: Repression     14

References

Anderson, M. C., & Green, C. (2001). Suppressing unwanted memories by executive control.
        Nature, 410, 366-369.

DePrince, A. P., & Freyd, J. J. (2004). Forgetting trauma stimuli. Psychological Science, 15(7),
      488-492.

Freyd, J. J. (1994). Betrayal trauma: Traumatic amnesia as an adaptive response to childhood
        abuse. Ethics & Behavior, 4(4), 307-329.

Joslyn, S., Loftus, E., McNoughton, A., & Powers. J. (2001). Memory for memory. Memory &
       Cognition, 29(6), 789-797.

McNally, R. J., Ristuccia, C. S., & Perlman, C. A. (2005). Forgetting of trauma cues in adults
        reporting continuous or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Psychological
        Science, 16(4), 336-340.