CogBlog – A Cognitive Psychology Blog

Many people believe that we can recall events in our life perfectly, like rewinding a movie and watching it over and over again. However, recalling events is a much more complicated process that can be filled with glitches and errors along the way. There are various steps that need to take place for an event to be stored in memory Events that we experience can be processed for meaning and stored for later use in long term memory so when we need to recall an event, the information is stored and retrievable through long term memory. The information in long-term memory is stored so we can recall this knowledge when needed. This information includes the ability to remember a person, the foods we like, and the location of the nearest hospital. The process of remembering these events is called retrieval. Retrieval for memories can vary depending on the content of the information. If the content of the information if very negative, it is forgotten more easily compared to positive or emotionally neutral events. Psychologists Greenhoot, McCloskey, and Glisky (2005) were interested in how adolescents were able to retrieve the memories of family violence that took place during their childhood. Because of their interest, they conducted a study to test whether or not adolescents even recalled the abuse, and if so, how accurate the adolescents’ memories were.

As reviewed by Greenhoot, McCloskey, and Glisky, both children and adults can distort and forget emotional memories (Lee & Brown, 2003; Merritt, Ornstein, & Spicker, 1994; Peterson & Whalen, 2001; Southwick, Morgan, Nicolaou, & Charney, 1997; Winograd & Neisser, 1992). In Greenhoot et al.’s study, mothers and their six to twelve year old children were asked about who was abused and what type of abuse took place. The mothers and children were also asked questions relating to other stressful events that could have taken place (e.g., moving or a death in the family) and questions relating to the child’s day-to-day life (e.g. the child’s best friend at the time). Six years later, the now adolescents were asked the same questions to see whether and how their answers differed from their answers to the same questions six years earlier and approximately 34% of participants did not recall any form of abuse occurring six years earlier. Of those adolescents that forgot about the abuse, half of them had experienced severe aggression.  For some people, serious forms of abuse may only happen once. An event so out of the ordinary and difficult to cope with seems like something that would always be a part of my memories, whether I liked it or not. Many of the general population would believe that the more traumatic details of abuse, such as being burned or sexually abused, would be engrained in their memory so they would be able to recall all of the details perfectly; this was not the case.

Most adolescents did not remember the exact details of the abuse, especially if their mother was the victim. About 34% failed to remember their mother being abused and 20% forgot that they themselves were abused as a child. Surprisingly, adolescents were better able to remember the less violent events (e.g. blaming, overall aggressive behavior) than the more severe forms of abuse (e.g. hitting, burning, choking). Some may wonder due to a lower rate of recall the more violence the child experienced if blocking is taking place. Blocking is when people suppress very stressful memories and they are unable to retrieve the information upon recall (Schacter, 1999). The psychologists conducted general memory tests and asked for the history of brain trauma and concussions to see whether forgetting about events across the board was an issue for some participants (Greenhoot et al., 2005). Due to Greenhoot et al.’s study, forgetting and not blocking seems to be the reason adolescents forgot about very violent instances. Researchers found that the adolescents who forgot about abuse poorly recalled events in their lives that were negative, such their family member attempting suicide (82%), their family member hospitalized (73%), and their mother losing/changing jobs (72%). The less negative non-abusive events had a higher rate of correct recollection such as a parent being put in jail (46%), moving to a new home (40%), and changing schools (45%).  Due to this information, it is clear that there is a difference in correct recollection of less negative emotional events versus more negative emotional events.  Although most people are able to retrieve negative memories involving abuse from their long-term memory, there are a percentage of people who do not recall abuse, either to themselves or their mother, ever happening which may be due to individual differences.

Differences in recollection were due to age, continued abuse after the first interview, opinions on the abuser and whether or not the abuse was witnessed or experienced. Previous research shows that younger children were more likely to forget the abuse (as reviewed by Greenhoot et al., 2005). The older children were also less likely to fail to report any abuse. Researchers believe that this is due to the children having more complete memories at an older age of the abuse they were experiencing. Since the children were more likely to be re-exposed to the abuse the older they were, they were exposed to more memories of abuse. Because of the longer repetition of abuse, they had more events to recall when answering whether or not they had been abused (as reviewed by Greenhoot et al., 2005). Also, in some cases, the abuse continued after the original interview. 43% of the women had the same partners six years later at the second interview and this factor did influence the recall of abuse. Recent exposure to abuse and agression led to more detailed recollections and less forgetting of the events since they were occurring recently in the child’s life. Opinions of the abuser also influenced the rate of forgetting. If the mother spoke negatively of the abuser, the adolescent was more likely to remember the abuse since the negative opinion matched the negative acts (s)he was experiencing. The schema that the child had for the abuser was not being altered and the child was less likely to forget about traumatic abuse. Also, when looking at the difference between witnessing and experiencing abuse, the children who experienced the abuse were much more likely to accurately recall the abuse than the children who witnessed the abuse. I personally find the terminology strange when dividing these two groups because on some level the child experienced the abuse by even witnessing repetitive abuse in their household. Although there were differences in the participants’ lives and what kind of abuse they endured, there were some commonalities that Greenhoot et al. found that led them to feel that there were different possibilities as to why some adolescents forgot about previous abuse.

In discussing these findings, Greenhoot et al. suggested three possibilities as to why some adolescents were able to completely forget about the abuse: 1) the trauma-specific amnesia mechanism (Read, 1997; Read & Lindsay, 2000), 2) the formation of a schematic representation of family violence in that they remembered the general acts of violence that seemed less traumatic over those that were less frequent and more severe, or 3) the act of avoiding the topic as a coping mechanism, which could have caused the adolescent to forget key details of their abuse (Williams, 1995).  The idea of a trauma-specific amnesia mechanism refers to our bodies having neurological mechanisms that essentially block memories from reoccurring (Kellogg, 2007). A schematic representation of violence means that we create general categories of events or knowledge, such as violence. Because we think less severe forms of violence occur more often, most people have a schematic representation of these less severe acts when they define violence. People have a bias in what we want to remember (Schacter, 1999). Having this bias allows us to alter what we remember based on what we want to remember and what our current beliefs are on a particular situation. For instance, if these adolescents wanted to believe that they had a pleasant childhood, they may remember the less severe forms of abuse. Future studies will need to examine the question regarding how and why memories of abuse can be forgotten or distorted.  The information that memories can be forgotten even if the event actually took place years ago is very relevant to legal and clinical settings (Greenhoot, et al., 2005). People can forget traumatic events because memory is reconstructive and fragile. People in professions working with abuse victims should understand that memory is malleable is not like a movie that the client can play over and over again. Losing clips of the movie is a possibility for victims of severe abuse and professionals working with them in regards to their abuse should understand that if something had actually occurred years ago, the tape could get old and tarnished along the way so rewinding the tape and playing it again isn’t as smooth as it once was.

References:

Greenhoot, A.F., McCloskey, L., & Gliskey, E. (2005). A longitudinal study of adolescents’ recollections of family violence. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19, 719-743.

Schacter, D.L. (1999). The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54, 182-203. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.54.3.182