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. 2008 Mar;36(2):449-60.
doi: 10.3758/mc.36.2.449.

The reappearance hypothesis revisited: recurrent involuntary memories after traumatic events and in everyday life

Dorthe Berntsen  1 , David C Rubin
Affiliations

The reappearance hypothesis revisited: recurrent involuntary memories after traumatic events and in everyday life

Dorthe Berntsen et al. Mem Cognit. 2008 Mar.

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.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The percentage of participants with a repeated memory or dream in the last year as a function of the age of the participant.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The mean ratings of valence, intensity, and frequency as a function of the age of the participant. A higher value indicates a more positive valence, with a value of 3.0 being neutral.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The retention function for positive, neutral, and negative repeated involuntary memories for all participants.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The distribution of positive, neutral, and negative repeated involuntary memories from age 0 to 50 for those participants who were 40 years old or older.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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    1. Berntsen D. Involuntary autobiographical memories. Applied Cognitive Psychology. 1996;10:435–454.

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