Does psychotherapy change trauma memory? Selective effects of Exposure, EMDR, and Imagery Rescripting on voluntary and involuntary aspects of aversive emotional memory

• Applicant: Professor Thomas Ehring, Ph.D., since 5/2021
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 439734821

Posttraumatic stress disorder is hallmarked by increased involuntary retrieval (e.g., intrusive re-experiencing) and impaired voluntary retrieval of trauma memory (e.g., fragmented and incoherent recall of events). In theory, psychological trauma-focused treatments should therefore reduce involuntary memory recall of traumatic events, while simultaneously preserving (or even enhancing) voluntary access to recollections of events. Experimental studies using pharmacological agents and analogue behavioral tasks have shown that such selective memory updating is indeed possible in humans. However, the selective effects of established trauma-focused treatments on involuntary and voluntary memory remain largely unknown. While therapeutic techniques such as Exposure, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Imagery Rescripting (IR) have repeatedly been shown to alleviate the burden of involuntary trauma memory, empirical data regarding their impact on voluntary memory is scarce and existing findings are rather inconsistent. Moreover, even though it may seem desirable for psychological treatments to improve voluntary memory quality (i.e., the degree of memory coherence and organization), there is an ongoing discussion about whether psychotherapy might also have detrimental effects by manipulating memory accuracy (i.e., the degree to which a memory is correctly recalled). Such claims have seriously challenged the validity of trauma memories that have been addressed in psychotherapy and pose a problem for the credibility of eyewitness testimonies in legal proceedings. The proposed project aims to systematically investigate the effects of Exposure, EMDR, and IR on voluntary and involuntary aversive memory, with a specific focus on the currently understudied aspects of voluntary memory. For this purpose, two experiments will separately examine treatment effects on (1) memory quality and (2) memory accuracy by extending on and addressing limitations of earlier research, which tentatively suggests that the treatment techniques may differentially affect voluntary trauma memory. Given that mental images of aversive events are explicitly modified during EMDR and IR, but not during Exposure, and based on prevailing theories about the underlying working mechanisms of the treatment methods, we hypothesize that EMDR and IR are more likely to directly affect voluntary memory when compared to Exposure. The results may further our understanding of established trauma-focused treatments and their effects on selective memory modification, which may eventually help to individually target relevant (memory) processes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Anna Kunze, Ph.D., until 5/2021