Believing in dissociative amnesia relates to claiming it: a survey of people's experiences and beliefs about dissociative amnesia

Judges and lawyers' beliefs in repression and dissociative amnesia may imperil justice: further guidance required

This article examines continuing misunderstanding about memory function especially for trauma, across three UK samples (N = 717). Delayed allegations of child sexual and physical abuse are prevalent in Western legal systems and often rely upon uncorroborated memory testimony to prove guilt. U.K. legal professionals and jurors typically assess the reliability of such memory recall via common sense, yet decades of scientific research show common sense beliefs often conflict with science. Recent international surveys show controversial notions of repression and accurate memory recovery remain strongly endorsed. In historical cases, these notions may lead to wrongful convictions. The current study surveyed the U.K. public, lawyers, and mental health professionals' beliefs about repression, dissociative amnesia and false memories. Study findings give unique data on judges' and barristers' beliefs. Overall, the study findings reinforce international scientists' concerns of a science - knowledge-gap. Repression was strongly endorsed by lay, legal and clinical participants (> 78%) as was dissociative amnesia (> 87%). Moreover, suboptimal professional legal education and juror guidance may increase misunderstanding. Correcting beliefs about memory function, and extending the contribution of memory science in the courtroom remains an important quest for cognitive scientists.

Understanding the relationship between self and memory through the IAM task

In this article we present a review of research on the IAM Task, whereby memories are cued by self-images in the form of "I am … " statements, such as I am a grandfather, I am a Bob Dylan fan, I am from Darlington, I am a Psychologist. Such cues are particularly successful at accessing memories associated with the formation of specific aspects of the self. We describe the conceptual and historical context for the development of our task and review findings from other researchers who have used the same basic design. We present aggregate data and examples from across several experiments, examining how these patterns change in psychological distress and dysfunction. We also discuss research on "I will be" statements and how these have been adopted to examine self-related future cognitions. We conclude that the working self operates to organise memory retrieval and make accessible episodic and semantic material for self-relevant periods across the lifespan. Moreover, accessibility of self-images can be modulated by retrieval of autobiographical memories, highlighting Conway's bidirectional relationship between memory and the self. We provide suggestions for future research and for the first time provide a standardised version of our IAM Task for use by researchers.

Repressed Memories (of Sexual Abuse Against Minors) and Statutes of Limitations in Europe: Status Quo and Possible Alternatives

One of the most heated debates in psychological science concerns the concept of repressed memory. We discuss how the debate on repressed memories continues to surface in legal settings, sometimes even to suggest avenues of legal reform. In the past years, several European countries have extended or abolished the statute of limitations for the prosecution of sexual crimes. Such statutes force legal actions (e.g., prosecution of sexual abuse) to be applied within a certain period of time. One of the reasons for the changes in statutes of limitations concerns the idea of repressed memory. We argue that from a psychological standpoint, these law reforms can be detrimental, particularly when they are done to endorse unfounded psychological theories. The validity of testimonies is compromised many years after the alleged facts, and abolishing the statute of limitations increases the chance that even more (false) recovered memories of abuse might enter the courtroom. We propose solutions to these changes such as establishing an independent expert committee evaluating claims of sexual abuse.

[A Transtheoretical Model and Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Case Report]

Dissociative identity disorder is the most severe of the dissociative disorders and neither the trauma model nor the sociocognitive model provide a satisfactory account of its complexity. Transtheoretical models propose an interaction of traumatic experiences as well as cultural, cognitive, and social factors in the development of the disorder. This perspective has important implications for the treatment which should encompass a reprocessing of traumatic memories, emotional regulation skills, and a modification of dysfunctional beliefs about memory. An elaboration of dissociative identities should be prevented. A corresponding inpatient treatment approach is described.

Ruling out feigned crime-related amnesia? A response to Acklin (2022)

In a recent paper, Acklin discussed a case of possible amnesia for a murder in terms of neurobiology, psychoanalysis, and personality assessment. Acklin accepted the defendant's claim of amnesia for the crime as genuine. The considerable literature that takes a skeptical view of crime-related amnesia was not cited, and the possibility of feigning or malingering was "ruled out" with a single sentence that does not withstand scrutiny. A review of the literature on feigned amnesia suggests that it may not be possible to rule out malingering even if the best available tools are used: There has been minimal investigation of most validity tests and estimates of base rates of feigned amnesia for a crime vary widely and make estimates of Negative Predictor Power highly unreliable. Although one cannot know from the information presented if Acklin's defendant legitimately experienced amnesia, feigning could not be ruled out using an interview and the test data cited by Acklin. I call for a moratorium on publication of further articles on crime specific amnesia that do not conscientiously examine other potential explanations and do not use current best practices for assessing negative response bias.

A scientometric and descriptive review on the debate about repressed memories and traumatic forgetting

Recent work suggests that the debate surrounding repressed memory and traumatic forgetting continues today. To further investigate this debate, we performed preregistered scientometric analyses on publications on the debate about repressed memory to provide information about its bibliometric evolution. Furthermore, we reviewed these publications to highlight the different positions taken by scholars on this debate. We reviewed 434 publications extracted from Scopus and Web of Science from 1969 to 2022. Our scientometric analyses permitted us to visualize the development of the publications on repressed memories and identify the terminology used to label this phenomenon. We identified three waves of publications (i.e., 1994-2000; 2003-2009; 2012-2021) showing that there is a recent peak of scholarly attention into this topic. 40% of scholars supported the phenomenon of repressed memory while 29% did not. Moreover, although in the last wave of publications, 35% of articles included critical arguments against the existence of repressed memory, a sizable number of publications (21%) supported ideas in favour of repressed memory. Finally, we observed that the term dissociative amnesia is another expression used to refer to the phenomenon. Our results provide additional evidence that the debate on repressed memories (and dissociative amnesia) is far from being over.

The Return of Repression? Evidence From Cognitive Psychology

The controversy over alleged repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) was among the most contentious ever to embroil psychology and psychiatry. Adapting paradigms from cognitive psychology, my research group tested hypotheses pertinent to repressed memory and false memory interpretations of recovered memories. We tested adults who: (1) report recovering memories of CSA after not having thought about their abuse for years; (2) report never having forgotten their CSA; (3) believe they harbor "repressed" memories of CSA; and (4) deny having been sexually abused. We tested hypotheses about mechanisms that might figure in the inability to recall memories of one's abuse and those that might render one susceptible to developing false memories of abuse. The purpose of this article is to summarize this work. Finally, I draw on the work of Lionel Penrose to speculate about why the popularity of the concept of repressed memories of trauma-or its synonym, dissociative amnesia for trauma-may be rising today.

The Memory-Undermining Effect of Simulated Crime-Related Amnesia and Its Legal Implications: a Review

Pretending to suffer from amnesia for a mock crime has been shown to lead to memory impairments. Specifically, when people are asked to give up their role of simulators, they typically recall fewer crime-relevant details than those who initially confess to a crime. In the current review, we amassed all experimental work on this subject and assessed the characteristics of the memory-undermining effect of simulated amnesia for a crime procedure (i.e., crime stimuli, simulating amnesia instructions, memory tests, and memory outcomes). We specifically focused on the effect that crime-related amnesia claims may have on offenders’ final memory reports. Our review showed that simulators who initially claimed amnesia might paradoxically experience some sort of forgetting pertaining to crime-related information. This issue could likely lead to legal complications that need be taken into account in crime-related amnesia cases.